CME Group’s one-ounce gold futures traded through their first weekend on a continuous schedule on Sunday. Nearly 15,000 contracts changed hands, worth about $60 million in notional value, the exchange said in a statement on Monday.
Crude oil did not get the same clearance. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission stayed CME’s 10-barrel WTI contract on July 9, one day before it was due to list, with Chairman Michael Selig calling the exchange’s decision to self-certify it “wholly inappropriate.”
Physical Delivery Sorts the Products
Both outcomes came from the same exchange. CME took its crypto futures and options round-the-clock at the end of May, then announced gold and oil on June 11, eleven days before the CFTC opened its consultation on continuous energy trading.
Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group
Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group, said the reference market decides the outcome. “The underlying looks like the variable doing most of the work,” he said. Continuous trading is accepted where the spot market already runs continuously and stopped where physical delivery is involved, according to Haeems.
Kalshi filed with the CFTC on July 21 for perpetual futures on gold, silver and platinum, its first application beyond crypto. Those contracts would open on a 24/5 schedule matching the underlying metals markets. The agency has 45 days to rule.
CFTC Buys Another Month on Energy Perpetuals
The Commission extended its comment deadline to August 26 on July 23, a 30-day delay it attributed to requests from commenters and additional questions it added to the request.
The consultation asks two things: whether standard futures including crude can run 24/7 without touching their fixed expiration, and whether a perpetual can reference a physically delivered or storable commodity. Perpetuals replace an expiry date with a periodic funding payment, a design that came out of offshore crypto venues.
Funding Rates Against Storage Costs
Maxime Seiler, CEO and Co-Founder at STS Digital
Maxime Seiler, CEO and Co-Founder at STS Digital, said the structure holds up in bitcoin because the underlying trades continuously and carries almost no cost of carry. Storage costs, convenience yield and seasonality break it, he said, because “a funding mechanism was never designed to carry a term structure.”
Hedgers lose the reason they use futures at all, according to Seiler. A producer or a refiner fixes a forward rate it can put in a budget, and a perpetual swaps that for a funding cost it cannot quantify at the point of execution. For a hedger, Seiler said, a perpetual “removes the reason to use it.”
Retail venues have not waited for the outcome. Pepperstone extended its perpetual CFD range to metals, indices and oil this month, having started with a single SpaceX contract.
Liquidity Providers See an Onshore Market Opening
Paul Howard, Wincent
Paul Howard, Senior Director at Wincent, said the CFTC’s May actions add access instead of eroding an offshore edge. “Rather than reducing competitive advantage, I’d frame this as opening a new market,” he said. Wincent provides liquidity in the products he is describing.
The regulated onshore market is roughly two months old. The CFTC approved Kalshi’s BTCPERP on May 29, and Kraken launched CFTC-regulated perpetual futures on June 15 through its Bitnomial acquisition.
CME sued the CFTC on June 18, arguing the contracts are swaps under Dodd-Frank and should never have been approved as futures. That case is pending in Washington.
Weekend Margin Is Still the Open Problem
Haeems said the settlement layer beneath continuous trading has barely moved, with Fedwire unavailable for long stretches of the weekend while margin calls still fall due. He put the Federal Reserve’s timetable for six operating days at 2028 or 2029.
Seiler described the current arrangement as continuous trading bolted onto weekday clearing, which leaves about three days of unfunded exposure on a position opened after Friday’s close. Neither estimate has been independently verified. The CFTC’s own consultation asks what qualifies as collateral when traditional payment rails are shut.
CME’s global head of metals, Jin Hennig, said of the gold launch that “global events don’t stop on weekends.” The 10-barrel WTI contract was scheduled to list on August 30. The Commission is reviewing it under a separate Section 40.3 filing, which carries a 45-day window it can extend by a further 45 days.
CME Group’s one-ounce gold futures traded through their first weekend on a continuous schedule on Sunday. Nearly 15,000 contracts changed hands, worth about $60 million in notional value, the exchange said in a statement on Monday.
Crude oil did not get the same clearance. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission stayed CME’s 10-barrel WTI contract on July 9, one day before it was due to list, with Chairman Michael Selig calling the exchange’s decision to self-certify it “wholly inappropriate.”
Physical Delivery Sorts the Products
Both outcomes came from the same exchange. CME took its crypto futures and options round-the-clock at the end of May, then announced gold and oil on June 11, eleven days before the CFTC opened its consultation on continuous energy trading.
Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group
Adam Haeems, Head of Asset Management at Tesseract Group, said the reference market decides the outcome. “The underlying looks like the variable doing most of the work,” he said. Continuous trading is accepted where the spot market already runs continuously and stopped where physical delivery is involved, according to Haeems.
Kalshi filed with the CFTC on July 21 for perpetual futures on gold, silver and platinum, its first application beyond crypto. Those contracts would open on a 24/5 schedule matching the underlying metals markets. The agency has 45 days to rule.
CFTC Buys Another Month on Energy Perpetuals
The Commission extended its comment deadline to August 26 on July 23, a 30-day delay it attributed to requests from commenters and additional questions it added to the request.
The consultation asks two things: whether standard futures including crude can run 24/7 without touching their fixed expiration, and whether a perpetual can reference a physically delivered or storable commodity. Perpetuals replace an expiry date with a periodic funding payment, a design that came out of offshore crypto venues.
Funding Rates Against Storage Costs
Maxime Seiler, CEO and Co-Founder at STS Digital
Maxime Seiler, CEO and Co-Founder at STS Digital, said the structure holds up in bitcoin because the underlying trades continuously and carries almost no cost of carry. Storage costs, convenience yield and seasonality break it, he said, because “a funding mechanism was never designed to carry a term structure.”
Hedgers lose the reason they use futures at all, according to Seiler. A producer or a refiner fixes a forward rate it can put in a budget, and a perpetual swaps that for a funding cost it cannot quantify at the point of execution. For a hedger, Seiler said, a perpetual “removes the reason to use it.”
Retail venues have not waited for the outcome. Pepperstone extended its perpetual CFD range to metals, indices and oil this month, having started with a single SpaceX contract.
Liquidity Providers See an Onshore Market Opening
Paul Howard, Wincent
Paul Howard, Senior Director at Wincent, said the CFTC’s May actions add access instead of eroding an offshore edge. “Rather than reducing competitive advantage, I’d frame this as opening a new market,” he said. Wincent provides liquidity in the products he is describing.
The regulated onshore market is roughly two months old. The CFTC approved Kalshi’s BTCPERP on May 29, and Kraken launched CFTC-regulated perpetual futures on June 15 through its Bitnomial acquisition.
CME sued the CFTC on June 18, arguing the contracts are swaps under Dodd-Frank and should never have been approved as futures. That case is pending in Washington.
Weekend Margin Is Still the Open Problem
Haeems said the settlement layer beneath continuous trading has barely moved, with Fedwire unavailable for long stretches of the weekend while margin calls still fall due. He put the Federal Reserve’s timetable for six operating days at 2028 or 2029.
Seiler described the current arrangement as continuous trading bolted onto weekday clearing, which leaves about three days of unfunded exposure on a position opened after Friday’s close. Neither estimate has been independently verified. The CFTC’s own consultation asks what qualifies as collateral when traditional payment rails are shut.
CME’s global head of metals, Jin Hennig, said of the gold launch that “global events don’t stop on weekends.” The 10-barrel WTI contract was scheduled to list on August 30. The Commission is reviewing it under a separate Section 40.3 filing, which carries a 45-day window it can extend by a further 45 days.
