Kalshi has begun offering perpetual futures tied to gold and silver in the United States, becoming the first exchange to secure CFTC approval for perps on assets beyond cryptocurrencies.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved the listings this week on a proposal originally filed in July, and the contracts went live Thursday.
Kalshi first received clearance to list cryptocurrency perpetuals in late May, bringing the asset class — which reached approximately $90 trillion in annual global volume in 2025 — onto U.S. shores for the first time. Since that debut, the platform reports $44 billion in notional trading volume across crypto perps.
Udesh Jha, chief risk officer at Kalshi Klear, the exchange’s clearing house, said the move into metals followed strong demand from traders. "Metals, especially gold and silver, have a story to tell because of inflation," Jha said, pointing to elevated interest in commodity-linked positions.
That appetite was already visible in Kalshi’s broader commodity segment. Volume on the platform’s commodity-related event contracts — which cover metals and oil — exceeded $400 million over seven months, the company announced Tuesday. That pace was half the time required for its crypto event contracts to reach the same milestone.
Perpetual futures, commonly called “perps,” are derivative contracts with no expiration date that do not require ownership of the underlying asset. They track the spot price of an instrument through a funding mechanism designed to keep the contract price aligned with the market.
In addition to the newly launched precious-metal perps, Kalshi is seeking CFTC approval for contracts tied to U.S. equities, industrial metal copper, and currencies, applications filed in August. The gold and silver green light marks the first non-crypto contract the regulator has authorized on the platform.
Following the launch of Kalshi’s perps, shares of traditional futures exchanges including the CBOE and CME Group fell sharply as traders weighed the potential for the new product to disrupt established derivatives markets. CME Group has sued the CFTC in an attempt to block domestic approval of perps, arguing the agency exceeded its authority.
Jha credited the early traction to Kalshi’s regulated structure. "It all goes back to the regulated platform," he said. "Doing it the right way, a way with proper risk controls … Unregulated platforms, they have always hit a ceiling."
CNBC and Kalshi share a commercial relationship that includes customer-acquisition arrangements and a minority investment.
