The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Tuesday cleared perpetual futures on individual U.S. stocks for American traders — and within hours, Wall Street interests filed a lawsuit seeking to stop it.

The story leads Decrypt's "Morning Minute," a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed in the newsletter are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

What Perpetual Futures Are

A perpetual future is a leveraged bet on a price that never expires. Traders can hold a position for as long as they can meet margin requirements and keep paying a funding rate. Its closest analog in traditional finance would be options, with a few differences — primarily the absence of an expiration date. Crypto traders have used the instrument for years, mostly on offshore venues such as Binance and onchain platforms like Hyperliquid, because U.S. law had no clear home for the product. Tuesday's clearance is what gives the instrument its first clear legal home in U.S. markets.

The Approval

The green light came as a statement from CFTC Chairman Michael Selig. Equity perpetual futures are now tradable on CFTC-registered exchanges, classified as security futures products under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which places them under joint CFTC and SEC oversight.

The list of venues that can actually offer the product is short, and it was assembled quietly. A firm must be a CFTC-designated contract market and separately notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange for security futures products. Seven entities hold both registrations today: Cboe, CME, Coinbase, Kalshi, Bitnomial, Nadex, and ICE Futures U.S. Five of those seven filed within a single 30-day window in September.

Kalshi is furthest along, with a filing covering 56 to 58 names and a launch expected within days. Coinbase has filed to list perps on Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia. Warner characterized the two as the immediate winners, with Hyperliquid and Lighter — the top crypto perps protocols — next in line for potential CFTC approvals and likely future winners as well (LIT rose 10% on the day). If Kalshi's timeline holds, the first regulated stock perps could be changing hands within days — while the policy enabling them is already under legal attack.

The Lawsuit

Then came the suit. A new group called the Capital Markets Alliance filed in the Southern District of New York, naming Cboe, Citadel Securities, and the Healthy Markets Association among its members. Its argument runs on two tracks: first, that stock perps are securities-based swaps that belong to the SEC, not the CFTC; and second, that the CFTC violated the Administrative Procedure Act by never explaining why it reversed an earlier position. The group wants the policy eliminated.

The American Securities Association piled on separately, pointing out that Congress banned selling security-based swaps to retail investors altogether. Between them, the two filings put the product's future on registered U.S. venues squarely at issue.

A CFTC spokesman called the suit "troubling," adding that "our markets should be governed by law, not litigation campaigns intended to block innovation."

The CME already tried something similar, suing over the CFTC's crypto perps approval on the theory that perpetuals are swaps rather than futures. That effort went nowhere.

Warner framed the standoff with an old phrase: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." In his view, the market is now at the fight stage — next stop, winning.

Macro, Crypto and Markets

Crypto majors are green after the midterm elections, with ZEC leading: BTC +1.6% at $78,300; ETH +2% at $2,320; SOL flat at $93; HYPE flat at $85; ZEC +9% at $1,285. LIT (+8%), VVV (+6%), RAY (+6%), and ENA (+5%) led top altcoin movers.

Oil fell 3% to $95; gold rose 3% to $4,054. Stock futures are green after the Democratic sweep: Dow +1.6%, Nasdaq +0.5%.

Crypto's Bruising Midterm Night

Crypto's $64 million campaign against Sherrod Brown failed, and he returns to the Senate, where he could land a committee leadership role with jurisdiction over the industry — capping a bruising night for crypto's political operation. Pro-crypto House Republicans Bryan Steil, Zach Nunn, and Ann Wagner lost their seats, while Pete Ricketts held Nebraska and Andy Barr won Kentucky's open Senate seat to replace Mitch McConnell.

Earnings, Security Incidents and Legal Battles

Circle reported third-quarter revenue and reserve income of $865 million, up 17% year over year, with average USDC circulation reaching $73.3 billion. CRCL fell 3% in premarket trading.

Documentation platform GitBook disclosed a breach of its infrastructure credentials that it described as "a sophisticated, highly targeted attack using AI agents," exposing API tokens, integration secrets, and Git Sync keys.

Justin Sun asked a federal court to sanction World Liberty Financial over a disclosure that initially listed the Trump-backed venture as a Florida company; Sun says the late amendment was a tactic to push his $45 million dispute out of federal court.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company holds "give or take 150,000 Bitcoin," worth roughly $11.5 billion, speaking at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano. The Q3 attestation accounts for $8.37 billion of Bitcoin, or about 100,100 coins, leaving some 50,000 unexplained.

Ethereum privacy network Aztec shipped its Tierra upgrade, patching a critical vulnerability from the prior version and cutting client-side proof generation for private transactions to about one second.

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance said it won't recommend enforcement over Canton Coin's programmatic issuance, treating the token as a digital commodity in a no-action letter.

Binance traced the $6.34 billion hack to a fake job interview in which an engineer was asked to download a coding assignment that installed malware its endpoint tools never flagged. Attackers then spent weeks moving laterally, abusing an internal AI tool to take over two more employees' machines before reaching the wallet signing service on October 29.

Corporate Treasuries and ETFs

Bitcoin ETFs saw $116 million in net outflows on Tuesday; ETH ETFs saw $85 million in outflows.

Meme Coin Tracker

Meme leaders were mixed: DOGE flat; SHIB +1%; PEPE +4%; PENGU +3%; TRUMP -11%; SPX +4%; BONK +8%.

Robinhood chain leaders were mostly green: Pons +8% to $147 million; Cashcat flat at $105 million; AI +8% at $59 million; Orbio +55% and Priors +40% led top movers.

Solana's top movers included AMD +35x, Choo +115%, and Ansem +13%, with Stonk +9%.

Token, Airdrop and Protocol Tracker

Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in revenue with $2.07 million, followed by Pump.fun with $1.57 million.

NEAR's House of Stake governance body voted to cut maximum annual token issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over 24 months, a 36% reduction in the rate.

Stonk.fun introduced a new feature allowing new tokens to start at a $20,000 market cap and bond at $150,000 to enable deeper liquidity.

Orbio relaunched from an AI credit marketplace into a private chat interface (and VVV competitor), offering 25 confidential models across Phala and NEAR alongside major commercial models priced below list.

Robinhood and Arbitrum opened applications for the second cohort of the Arbitrum Mentorship Program, a 12-week track for teams building on Robinhood Chain that offers $100,000 in grants and a demo day. The pair have committed $1.8 million in total grants.

NFTs

NFT leaders were mostly flat: Punks flat at 30.4 ETH; BAYC -1% at 5.6 ETH; Pudgy flat at 2.32 ETH. Crawlers (+80%) and Yield Field Deeds (+11%) led top movers.