Six companies led by Coinbase asked a federal court in Manhattan on November 9, 2026, to accept a joint brief defending the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against a lawsuit seeking to undo the agency's approval of single-stock perpetual futures. The six firms include Coinbase, prediction-market operator Kalshi, and Payward, the parent company of the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.

The document takes the form of an amicus — or "friend of the court" — brief, a submission filed by parties that are not the main litigants in a case in order to offer the court additional legal arguments or perspective. Such filings are a standard vehicle in contested regulatory litigation, allowing outside parties to place arguments before the court without joining the case. In this instance, the six companies are jointly asking the court to consider their support for the CFTC's position as the agency defends its own approval decision in litigation. The group's makeup — spanning major crypto trading venues and a prediction marketplace — puts an industry-side perspective before the court as it weighs the approval at issue.

The dispute centers on single-stock perpetual futures, derivative contracts tied to the price of an individual publicly traded share. Unlike conventional futures, which carry fixed expiration dates, perpetual contracts have no expiry — a structure that emerged in the cryptocurrency derivatives market, where perpetuals have become among the most heavily traded instruments. The CFTC is the independent U.S. federal agency responsible for regulating futures, swaps, and certain other derivatives products.

The underlying lawsuit challenges the regulator's approval of these products, and the companies' joint brief is intended to reinforce the CFTC's defense of that decision. The litigation's outcome will determine whether the approval stands and, with it, the regulatory footing of single-stock perpetual futures in the United States. Attention now turns to whether the Manhattan court accepts the joint filing and how the challenge proceeds. Details including the identity of the plaintiff, the case docket, and a timetable for the court's consideration of the request were not included in the source report.

This report was first published by COINOTAG.