Crypto.com and OG.com bring 24/7 perpetual futures to US traders

What happened

Crypto.com and OG.com announced on Tuesday that crypto perpetual contracts are now available to eligible US traders through the Crypto.com App and the Crypto.com Exchange, giving retail and institutional customers a federally regulated route into derivatives that carry no expiry date. Bitcoin.com News and Crypto Daily both reported the launch.

The contracts sit inside a framework supervised by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The rollout follows Crypto.com's registration as an introducing broker with the National Futures Association, while OG.com supplies the underlying market infrastructure through its CFTC-regulated exchange, clearinghouse and futures commission merchant.

Traders can take long or short positions with leverage of up to 5x, use isolated margin and attach take-profit and stop-loss orders. Retail customers reach the products through Crypto.com's mobile application, while institutional and more experienced traders use the exchange. Positions can remain open indefinitely provided margin requirements are satisfied, rather than being settled or rolled on a fixed date.

Kris Marszalek, founder and CEO of OG.com and Crypto.com, described the launch as another step toward bringing financial products together in a single trading environment. He said traders now have direct access to continuous liquidity, flexible leverage and built-in risk controls, whether they are hedging a crypto portfolio or trading around the clock.

Why it matters

Perpetual futures are among the most heavily traded instruments in digital asset markets, yet US retail participants have historically had much narrower derivatives access than users of offshore exchanges. A domestic, regulated venue for a product long associated with overseas platforms changes where that activity can legally take place.

If regulated US platforms can offer comparable instruments, some volume that has migrated offshore could move back toward domestic venues, which could in turn support price discovery and liquidity on regulated exchanges. Institutional traders also gain another way to hedge crypto exposure without relying on contracts that expire. The trade-off is that leverage magnifies losses as well as gains, and positions can be liquidated when adverse price moves exhaust available margin.

What the data shows

The 5x leverage ceiling is the most striking number in the offering. International derivatives platforms have commonly provided 20x to 100x exposure on major crypto pairs. At 100x, a move of roughly 1% against a position can be enough to wipe out a trader's margin, depending on maintenance requirements and fees. A 5x cap still provides meaningful leverage while leaving positions considerably more room before forced liquidation.

Funding rates are the other figure traders will watch. Because perpetuals have no settlement date, funding payments become a recurring cost for anyone holding a position over an extended period, and those expenses combined with margin requirements can complicate leveraged trades quickly.

Background

The concept behind perpetuals is often traced to economist Robert Shiller, who proposed it in 1993. Crypto exchanges later turned the idea into a core trading product: Bitmex helped popularize the modern perpetual swap in May 2016 with its XBTUSD contract, which offered leverage reaching 100x. The structure removed the recurring task of rolling expiring futures into new contracts.

Perpetuals typically use funding payments between long and short traders to keep contract prices close to spot markets. When contracts trade above their reference price, longs generally pay shorts; the reverse applies when contracts trade below it. Crypto.com is not the first major platform to enter the US segment. Coinbase has pursued access through its regulated futures business and Deribit infrastructure, and Kraken launched US perpetuals after acquiring Bitnomial. Crypto Daily also noted a May 29 CFTC staff action confirming that certain digital commodity perpetuals could be treated as foreign futures under existing rules.

What to watch

The competitive question is whether regulated US venues can attract and keep derivatives volume that has historically gone offshore, particularly as Coinbase and Kraken build out their own perpetual offerings. Also worth watching is how funding rates and margin rules settle in practice for the new contracts, and whether other platforms follow Crypto.com and OG.com into the US perpetual market.

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