The public comment file on the CFTC's request covering round-the-clock futures trading and perpetual contracts closes on Wednesday, August 26, 2026. The governing document is Federal Register 2026-15216, published Tuesday, July 28, 2026, and it is not a fresh request. It extends by thirty days a request the Commission first published on Thursday, June 25 as document 2026-12784, which had been set to close on Monday, July 27.
Perpetual contracts are the instrument a large share of crypto traders touch every single day, and the US derivatives regulator now has an open file asking how that structure behaves when it is pointed at a barrel of crude oil instead of a token. What follows is what the request says, who is allowed to answer it, and which parts land closest to a crypto trader's screen.
What a Perpetual Contract Is and How It Differs From a Dated Future
The CFTC's own definition is the cleanest one in circulation. Perpetual contracts, the Commission writes, "are derivative contracts that have no fixed expiration date and rely on a periodic funding rate mechanism that is designed to maintain relative price parity with the underlying asset's spot price."
Everything that makes a perp feel different to trade falls out of those two clauses. A standard futures contract has a finish line, and the approach of that expiry is what drags the futures price back toward cash, because on expiry day the two have to be the same thing. A perpetual has no finish line, so it needs a substitute, and the substitute is the funding payment. Think of funding as a toll charged every few hours to the side of the market leaning hardest, paid straight across to the side leaning the other way. When the perp trades rich to spot, longs pay shorts, and when it trades cheap, shorts pay longs.
That single design choice is why perps took over crypto volume. There is no expiry to roll, no quarterly contract to move into, and no calendar spread to manage.
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Feature
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Dated futures contract
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Perpetual contract
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Expiration
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Fixed date, contract settles or delivers
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None
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Convergence to spot
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Enforced by expiry
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Enforced by periodic funding payments
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Position maintenance
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Roll into the next contract
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Hold indefinitely and pay or receive funding
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Main holding cost
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Calendar spread at each roll
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Cumulative funding over the holding period
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Reference price needed
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At settlement
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At every funding interval
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That last row is the entire regulatory question compressed into one line, and it is worth sitting with before reading anything else about the request.
What the CFTC Is Actually Asking
The file covers two separate matters. The first is extending standard futures contracts to 24/7 trading with no change at all to their fixed expiration, delivery or settlement terms. The second is the listing of perpetual contracts that reference physically delivered or storable energy commodities, crude oil being the named example.
Both sit under the same legal test. Core Principle 3 requires a designated contract market to list only contracts that are "not readily susceptible to manipulation," and for a cash-settled product that means a settlement price which is reliable, publicly available, disseminated on time, and computed from a cash market too liquid to push around. Core Principle 4 adds surveillance across all trading hours, which is a very different problem at 3am on a Sunday than at 11am on a Tuesday.
The July 28 extension did more than move the date. It added three fresh questions on top of the original set.
The weekend price-formation question. The Commission asks if a smaller 24/7 contract referencing the same crude oil market could create an incentive for participants holding benchmark futures to build a position before the benchmark market closes for the week, trade over the weekend in a way that moves prices, and then influence price formation when the benchmark reopens, including the possibility of crude oil prices reaching negative prices. Anyone who traded through April 2020 knows that last clause is not hypothetical.
The stayed contract. On Wednesday, July 8, 2026, NYMEX self-certified a 10-Barrel West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil Futures contract built to trade twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, covering weekend and holiday periods when the underlying physical crude market is not assessed at all. On Thursday, July 9, the Commission stayed the listing under Regulation 40.2 and is now inviting comment on every aspect of it.
The readiness timeline. For firms not currently able to support continuous trading, the Commission wants the concrete steps, investments and staffing changes required, with an estimated implementation time attached to each. The voting summary appended to the extension runs a single line. Chairman Selig voted in the affirmative, and no Commissioner voted in the negative.
Why a Bitcoin Order Is the Reason This File Exists
This is where the crypto trader's interest stops being academic. On Friday, May 29, 2026, the Commission issued an order permitting a designated contract market to list, as a futures contract, a perpetual contract referencing the spot price of bitcoin, and issued a Policy Statement Concerning the Listing of Perpetual Contracts alongside it, published Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 91 FR 33160. We covered that approval and what it implied for funding rates when it landed, so this article does not re-run it.
What matters is the reasoning, because the reasoning is what the energy file now tests. The order was expressly limited to that contract and to similarly structured perpetuals referencing digital commodities with "deep, active, and continuous spot-market trading," and it rested substantially on the character of the bitcoin spot market, which the Commission described as continuous, broadly distributed, transaction-based trading that produces continuous observability of a reference price.
Read that back with a funding interval in mind. A perpetual needs a trustworthy spot print every single time funding is calculated, and crypto produces one by construction, because the spot market never closes. Crude oil does not. Its cash market is assessed only during defined windows, and that gap is precisely what the Commission named when it stayed the NYMEX listing. The Policy Statement said plainly that perpetuals referencing asset classes outside the order, agricultural and energy products among them, would be evaluated on their own terms.
And there is a second-order point for anyone who trades weekends. Futures markets that close on Friday and reopen on Sunday produce price gaps, a pattern crypto traders track closely because it shows up in bitcoin futures. Continuous trading removes the gap but not the underlying problem, it relocates it into thin overnight and weekend liquidity, and the June 25 request asks directly how prices formed in those hours would feed the benchmark prices that commercial agreements, exchange-traded funds and other derivatives settle against.
Who Can Comment and How
Anyone can. There is no standing requirement, no registration, and no obligation to be a market participant. Individual traders, academics, trade associations and exchanges all file into the same public docket, and the Commission states that commenters need not address every question.
Three routes are open. The first is Regulations.gov, where you filter to documents open for comment, select the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the agency and open the submission form. The second is the Submit A Public Comment button at the top of the Federal Register page for the document. The third is mail or hand delivery to Christopher Kirkpatrick, Secretary of the Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20581.
Four practical points before filing. Reference the request by its full title and by RIN 3038-AF75. Write in English or attach an English translation. Understand that comments are published without review for, and without removal of, any personal identifying information, so nothing goes in that you would not want indexed under your own name. And bring data, because the Commission asked twice for responses supported by empirical analysis and market-level statistics rather than conclusory assertions.
Two companion files close in the same stretch. A joint CFTC and SEC request on the further definition of "swap" and "security-based swap", document 2026-12743, published Wednesday, June 24, closes Monday, August 24, 2026, and a joint request on portfolio margining and cross-margining, document 2026-13182, closes Monday, August 31, 2026. Both agencies are working the same seam at the same time.
What Would Change for a Trader If the Structure Travels
None of this is settled. A request for comment is a question, not a rule and not a proposal to adopt one, and nothing in the file commits the Commission to any outcome, any timing or any direction at all. What the file does do is name the specific problems that would have to be solved, and those are readable right now.
Funding would need a price nobody can move. The request asks if any cash price series for crude oil satisfies the reliability test at every funding interval, and if none does, what happens when a perpetual references a futures price or an assessed physical price instead. It also puts a sharp question to the funding linkage itself, meaning the risk of a trader using perpetual positions to influence the referenced price around the calculation window.
Margin would have to work when the banks are shut. A whole block of the original request deals with margin called during hours when traditional payment systems do not operate, which forms of collateral could be eligible, and if a 24/7 contract should carry an additional initial-margin buffer or adjusted weekend levels. Crypto venues settled this years ago with stablecoin collateral and automated liquidation, regulated futures markets have not, and the Commission is asking what real-time or tokenized payment infrastructure could fill the hole.
Cost of carry breaks the crypto analogy. Funding-rate mechanisms developed in other markets, the Commission notes, were generally designed for assets without significant cost of carry. Bitcoin does not sit in a tank at Cushing, Oklahoma accruing storage costs and seasonal convenience yield. Crude oil does, and the request asks if a funding calculation can even represent contango, backwardation and storage cycles, or if some other convergence mechanism would be needed instead.
Position limits already apply. The federal speculative position limits in part 150 cover enumerated core referenced futures contracts, and NYMEX West Texas Intermediate crude oil is one of them. A perpetual with no expiry accumulates position differently than a contract that rolls every quarter, and the request asks how deliverable supply at the pricing point compares to the size a perpetual market could build.
For a crypto trader the practical read is narrower than any of that. The regulator has now written down, in public, which properties of a market make a perpetual contract workable in its view. Continuous spot trading, broad distribution of that trading, an observable reference price at every interval, and an asset without a heavy carry. That is a checklist, and it applies to any asset anyone proposes to build a perp on next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are perpetual futures legal in the US?
A CFTC order issued Friday, May 29, 2026 permits a designated contract market to list a perpetual contract referencing bitcoin's spot price as a futures contract, so the structure has a regulated US path for that specific case. The August 26 request covers extending it to energy commodities, which the Commission assesses separately and on its own terms.
Does the August 26 deadline mean a decision is coming?
No. Wednesday, August 26, 2026 is the date the public comment file closes and nothing more. A request for comment carries no decision, no proposed rule text and no obligation on the Commission to act afterward.
Why does the CFTC care about a 10-barrel oil contract?
Because the size is not the point, the price formation is. A small contract tracking the same crude market can print prices during weekend hours when the physical market is not assessed, and those prints can bleed into benchmarks that far larger commercial agreements and derivatives settle against.
What is a designated contract market?
It is the CFTC registration category for a regulated US futures exchange, and the same category that lists the event contracts behind regulated prediction markets. Core Principles 3, 4 and 5 govern what a DCM may list, how it surveils trading and which position limits attach.
Bottom Line
Wednesday, August 26, 2026 is the day the record closes, not the day anything is decided, and the useful move is to read the questions rather than wait on an answer. Watch three things once the file shuts. The comment docket under RIN 3038-AF75 shows who bothered to answer and with what data, which usually tells you more about direction than commentary will. The stayed NYMEX 24/7 crude contract stays stayed until the Commission says otherwise, so its status is the nearest thing to a live scoreboard here. And the companion files closing Monday, August 24 and Monday, August 31 are run jointly with the SEC, which says more about the pace of US derivatives rulemaking than the energy file does alone. The structure a crypto trader takes for granted is being examined by a regulator writing down what makes it work, and that document will outlive this deadline by years.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.
