According to Woofun AI, six institutions, including Coinbase (COIN.US), Kalshi, Payward, DRW Holdings, Jump Trading, and Paradigm, submitted third-party defense opinions to the New York District Court on the 9th to resolutely uphold the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)'s supervisory authority over indefinite futures contracts for individual stocks. Previously, the listing application submitted by KalshiEx, Coinbase Derivatives, and Bitnomial Exchange on September 18 was officially approved on November 2. CFTC Chairman Seliger clearly defined on the 3rd that such transactions are limited to designated exchanges that have completed registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The Capital Markets Alliance Association (comprised of the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE.US) and Citadel Securities) immediately filed a lawsuit and requested that approval be withdrawn. The core dispute was product characterization. The Association argues that indefinite futures without an expiration date are actually securities exchange products under the jurisdiction of the SEC, and the CFTC's move constituted an infringement of authority. In response, the six companies mentioned above countered that even without a fixed expiration date, the product still falls under the category of individual stock futures jointly supervised by the CFTC and SEC under the 2000 Congressional Legislative Framework, and is by no means an exchange product.
It is worth noting that DRW Holdings, Jump Trading, and Paradigm, as institutions that provide liquidity, buy, sell, and invest, have positions directly related to the stability of market infrastructure.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, if the court adopts the other party's opinion to reclassify the product as a securities exchange, retail investors in the US will be forced to lose their trading eligibility because the SEC has not yet perfected the rules governing trading platforms for individual investors. In its defense, Coinbase issued a stern warning that if such innovation were to be stifled, demand would spill over to unregulated overseas markets. Therefore, even in the face of legal challenges, it insisted on launching the service in the US to ensure that customer interests are not eroded by the offshore black market. This logic forms the core commercial basis of this defense.
This lawsuit is not only a game of regulatory jurisdiction, but also a head-on collision between America's traditional finance and Web3 innovation models. If the federal district court finally supports the CFTC, it will pioneer the survival of decentralized finance products within traditional regulatory frameworks; conversely, it may accelerate the flow of innovative capital to regulatory depressions. This is yet another critical stress test faced by US regulators in defining the attributes of emerging derivatives since the DeFi outbreak.