Kalshi, the event-contracts exchange, has asked U.S. regulators to approve an oil futures contract that would stay alive for 10 years before reaching expiration, moving one of the oldest corners of finance into a very different trading model. The company bills the product as the first of its kind in U.S. markets.

The contract is designed to track West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil, but the distinguishing feature is its structure: traders would not have to roll contracts constantly in order to maintain the same position in oil. The no-expiry format is borrowed from cryptocurrency markets, where perpetual futures — contracts without fixed expiration dates — have become the most heavily traded instruments. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) now has 45 days to decide whether the experiment belongs in regulated U.S. commodity trading.

A Single Trade Built to Last Nearly a Decade

Typical oil futures come with a calendar attached. A trader buys exposure, the contract moves closer to expiration, and anyone who wants to remain in the trade must roll into another month. The rollover routine becomes costly once funds start bleeding money through transaction costs, price spreads, and poorly timed trades.

Kalshi's answer is essentially a question: why repeat that process every few weeks or months? The contract it proposes would let one position last ten years, using a funding mechanism that keeps the contract's price tied to the WTI market. For traders holding crude exposure over extended periods, that could mean simpler mechanics — no constant rolling, and a reduced risk of mistakenly rolling into a physical delivery situation at Cushing, Oklahoma, where the trader had no intention of taking possession of a barrel of oil.

The company also believes that a single long-duration contract would keep trading activity concentrated in one place, instead of spreading liquidity across a long series of expirations.

The idea is arriving at a convenient moment. The Iran war has turned crude into one of the most aggressively traded macro assets of the year, and hedge funds, institutions, and individual traders have all been chasing energy swings as geopolitical headlines keep jerking prices around. WTI futures have traveled through a range of roughly $60 per barrel since January — exactly the kind of environment in which traders start caring far more about execution, rollover costs, and whether their instrument is flexible enough.

The contract would trade 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday. While it would not truly last forever, 10 years is close enough that the average person using it would likely not notice the difference in a regular trade.

There is one complication, however: regulators cannot treat this as an everyday exchange listing. Derivatives with perpetual characteristics undergo closer scrutiny, so Kalshi cannot self-certify the contract the way many exchanges can with other products. The CFTC must review the filing on its own merits, and that 45-day review is now the gate the product must clear before any U.S. trader can access it.

CME Backed Off, While Kalshi Pushes Further

The filing comes at an inopportune time for CME Group, whose exchanges list the WTI futures that serve as the benchmark price for physical crude sales and which recently abandoned its own attempt to change the rules of oil trading. CME had been developing an early version of a contract that would allow trading 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The proposal met stiff opposition from the oil sector and regulatory authorities. The issue at stake was not just whether traders wanted to trade oil futures on Saturdays. The physical oil market is priced using benchmark prices, and it was not clear whether nonstop trading could be kept grounded in reality. The CFTC initially blocked the plan, setting off months of debate, and CME eventually shelved it.

Kalshi is taking a different route. Its market would stop for the weekend, but the contract itself would barely expire at all.

There is also history between the two companies. CME executives have criticized perpetual futures, and CME sued the CFTC earlier this year over its decision allowing Kalshi to offer crypto-linked versions of the same broad derivative concept — a dispute that already placed the two firms on opposite sides of this product category.

Oil is not the only regulatory battlefield surrounding Kalshi. Ohio, 38 other states, and Washington, D.C. have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a separate challenge involving Kalshi's sports event contracts. In its October 7 filing, Ohio backed New Jersey in Flaherty v. KalshiEX, LLC, Case No. 26-299. The matter revolves around whether the sports event contracts qualify as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and, if they do, whether the application of federal commodities law preempts state gambling law.

In the Third Circuit, Kalshi prevailed, and the sports event contracts were deemed swaps under federal jurisdiction. The Ninth Circuit ruled against Kalshi, holding that the application of Nevada's gaming law remained intact. The Sixth Circuit also rejected the proposition that federal commodities law preempted state gambling law. Other similar challenges are still pending in the Second, Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits, as well as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.