Ondo urges SEC, CFTC to bring US stock perpetuals onshore

Ondo Finance is urging US regulators to bring perpetual futures tied to individual stocks onshore, arguing that the products can already operate under the country’s existing security futures framework without new rules.

In three Aug. 24 comment letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Ondo argued that existing rules can accommodate perpetual stock futures while also accounting for modern margining practices and onchain market data.

Ondo said its Panama-based affiliate already offers stablecoin-settled perpetual futures on individual US-listed stocks outside the United States, with the platform recording $8 billion in cumulative trading volume as of Aug. 14, around six weeks after its launch.

Ondo ranks fourth among tokenized RWA managers by distributed value. Source: RWA.xyz

The company argued that scheduled funding payments can keep perpetual contracts aligned with the price of their underlying stocks, performing a similar function to expiration in traditional futures.

“Nothing in the statutory definition of a security futures product requires a fixed expiration date,” Ondo said in its product-classification letter.

Ondo also noted that many of the stocks underlying offshore perpetuals are principally traded on US exchanges. “Bringing that activity back to the U.S. should not be an open question; it’s something both agencies should actively pursue,” the company said.