Written by: Xiaobing

On September 3, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad announced on X that the company has submitted registration documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to apply for offering stock perpetual contracts in the U.S. The next step will also require product approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Following this news, COIN's stock price jumped over 5% on the same day, reaching $187 during intraday trading.

A single tweet, a declaration, and the stock price rose by 5 points. This is not just another "Coinbase wants to do stock trading" story; capital is betting on a possibility: the crypto-native derivatives architecture is reversing and devouring the core asset classes of traditional finance.

The same apple, three ways to eat it

In the U.S. stock market of 2026, there are already three entirely different "Apple stocks" competing for the same batch of demand: global trading, around-the-clock leverage, fragmented holdings, and on-chain collateral.

The first kind is the real stocks in brokerage accounts. Investors hold Class A common stock of Apple Inc., enjoying shareholder rights, dividend eligibility, and voting rights. Trading relies on the DTCC clearing system, T+1 settlement, and trading hours are limited to Eastern Standard Time. This is a classic paradigm that has existed for decades and is currently the most liquid and well-regulated form.

The second kind is Stock Tokens on the Robinhood Chain.

On July 1, 2026, Robinhood launched over 190 tokenized stocks on its self-built Arbitrum L2, serving users in over 120 countries and regions, supporting 24/7 trading and DeFi collateral. However, Robinhood's own disclosure documents clearly state: Stock Tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited, providing economic exposure to the underlying securities but granting investors no legal or beneficial rights to the underlying security issuer. Put simply: what you are buying is not Apple's stock; it is an IOU tracking Apple's stock price.

The third kind is the stock perpetual contracts that Coinbase is applying to enter the U.S. market. Perpetual contracts do not have an expiration date and are anchored to spot prices through a funding fee mechanism, allowing traders to go long or short, with maximum leverage of up to 10 times (for stocks) or 20 times (for ETFs). Coinbase launched perpetuals for stocks like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Meta, and Google, as well as the SPY and QQQ ETFs in overseas markets back in March this year. Settled in USDC and operating on the perpetual engine of the crypto exchange.

The regulatory channel for perpetual contracts is being opened

Coinbase's decision to submit applications to both the SEC and CFTC simultaneously deserves attention.

Single stock perpetual contracts are considered individual stock derivatives, falling under the jurisdiction of the SEC, so the SEC registration process must be completed first. Product approval (whether it can actually be listed for trading) is decided by the CFTC. Coinbase's structure is as follows: Coinbase Derivatives operates the contract market, while Coinbase Financial Markets provides regulated customer access.

The reason this channel is open is due to the background that the CFTC approved the prediction market platform Kalshi and Coinbase to list Bitcoin perpetual contracts at the end of May 2026, marking the first time in U.S. regulatory history that perpetual contracts are officially recognized as futures products traded on regulated exchanges. Subsequently, Kalshi expanded crypto perpetuals to more assets like Ethereum, Solana, and XRP, and on August 18, submitted an application to the CFTC for stock index perpetuals tracking the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Index (benchmarking the top 500 listed companies in the U.S.).

Kalshi's stock index perpetuals only require CFTC approval, as broad-based stock index baskets fall under CFTC regulation. In contrast, Coinbase's single stock perpetuals require dual approval from both the SEC and CFTC, which is a higher threshold, but once approved, the product's precision and trading depth will be greater.

Of course, traditional forces will not sit idly by.

CME Group, the world's largest derivatives exchange operator, filed a lawsuit against the CFTC and its chairman Michael Selig in federal court on June 18, arguing that the CFTC exceeded its authority by approving perpetual contracts.

CME's core argument is that such products should be classified as swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act rather than futures. If classified as swaps, margin requirements will more than double, enough to keep perpetual contracts out of the U.S. market. In a rebuttal motion submitted on September 2, the CFTC referred to CME's lawsuit as "much ado about nothing" and pointed out that CME itself is also qualified to launch similar products as a regulated exchange, arguing that the so-called competitive harm is unfounded.

The outcome of this lawsuit will directly determine the fate of perpetual contracts in the U.S.

Nasdaq's counterattack: from 16 hours to 23 hours

Traditional exchanges naturally feel threatened. On April 10, 2026, the SEC approved Nasdaq's proposal for a "global trading hours" extension, allowing U.S. stock trading to expand from 16 hours a day to 23 hours, leaving only a 1-hour maintenance window in the evening. Nasdaq has confirmed that the plan will officially implement on December 6, 2026.

The data driving this change is quite straightforward: the scale of U.S. stocks held by overseas investors has reached $17 trillion. Nasdaq President Tal Cohen argues that if global investors want to trade U.S. stocks according to their time zones, exchanges must extend their operating hours to meet demand.

However, 23 hours a day for five days is still not comparable to the crypto market's 24/7. The price risk exposure during weekends and holidays remains unaddressed by traditional exchanges. Coinbase and Kalshi’s perpetual contracts inherently do not have this limitation.

More critically, Nasdaq is extending trading hours for the same asset type. In contrast, crypto derivatives change the asset type itself, compressing full securities that require brokerage accounts, T+1 settlement, and shareholder voting rights into a pure price signal carrier that can be embedded in DeFi lending protocols, transacted on-chain for cross-margin trading, and settled instantly in USDC.

Who is being repriced?

The data surrounding on-chain tokenized stocks is transitioning from "experimental" to "significant."

From the beginning of 2026 to now, the cumulative trading volume of on-chain tokenized stocks has reached approximately $9 billion, an increase of about 800% compared to the beginning of the year. July alone set a record with a trading volume of $11.3 billion. The number of addresses holding tokenized stocks exceeded 1.9 million in August, with a growth of 92% within 30 days. Over 55% of tokenized stock trades occurred outside traditional trading hours in the U.S.

When these three forms exist simultaneously, true repricing will not occur within their respective markets but rather at their intersection.

For Coinbase, if the stock perpetual contracts pass approval, it would open the largest compliant entry point for retail investors in the U.S., marrying the leverage model of crypto perpetuals to the largest stock market globally. The valuation logic for COIN will switch from "crypto exchange" to "all-asset derivatives platform," which is a completely different pricing model.

For Robinhood, the debt security packaging of Stock Tokens is a clever but fragile structure. The SEC's tokenized securities guidance issued in January 2026 explicitly categorized this type of synthetic exposure product issued by third parties as an object of enhanced scrutiny. After being online for two months, the total value of tokenized assets on Robinhood Chain reached approximately $88 million, with an average daily trading volume of about $55 million, but meme coins and stablecoins still dominate, and tokenized stocks have not yet become the core use of the chain.

For traditional exchanges, the CME lawsuit is a defensive battle. If perpetual contracts are recognized by the court as futures rather than swaps, crypto-native platforms will enter the derivatives market with very low compliance costs, posing a direct challenge to the long-maintained moat of CME (standardized futures contracts, large clearing systems, institutional client networks) in a parallel world that operates 24/7 and settles in USDC.

The financial markets of 2026 are undergoing an irreversible structural bifurcation: the competition for trading hours has ended, and 24/7 will become the default state of infrastructure. The next competition will focus on who can provide the highest leverage efficiency in an "always online" market with the lowest regulatory costs, while avoiding systemic risks.

The finish line of this race has not been drawn yet, but the starting gun has already fired.