Maybe you saw?  Perpetual Futures are now available in the US as of 21 July 2025...

But it is on Coinbase, and pretty much no one cares.

Coinbase is currently offering US residents an opportunity to trade perpetual futures, linear USDC contracts. (The trade is settled in USDC...the government wants its share after all.)

Overall 24 hour traded volume on Coinbase is a little over $5 billion, including the Spot market.

Also - pretty hamstrung as far as the real beauty of perpetuals, and that is the ability to have outrageous leverage.  Coinbase is only offering x10 leverage, which to be completely clear - is more than enough for any one regular person.  Unless you have a completely armored approach to the market, where you go ape with x10 leverage, but have your SL a tick or two behind your entry so you don't get completely creamed...x10 is enough to make an atheist start praying when market starts turning away from your entry.

While this development is not at all what investors in the US want, it is a start.  (Reddit seems to be a decent sampling of opinions out there...and no one on this thread is excited about it.  This comment pretty much sums it all up.)

Which really brings us to the crux of the issue - fucking regulations.

When I really started trading and getting immersed in the crypto world 2020-2021 when everyone was bored and trying to figure out what to do with themselves, and trying to figure out how to earn money on their own without having to clock in for a job that could disappear at the snap of a finger that leads to the shuttering of the entire world's economy.

The entire ethos was around upholding the tenants of 0 regulation, true laissez-faire markets untainted by the government's dirty hands. 

(There is an entire other discussion to have about mixed economies and how everything anyone who is at all critical of Capitalism on the whole really just hates the results of government interventionism within the free markets.)

Truly - the glory days.  I feel like I got to experience something truly special, this is when 17 year-olds could ape themselves into a lambo.

Then entering stage right, institutional interest, involvement, and money.  Yes, ETFs started changing everything.  Especially interesting is how the ETFs were approved in the US under the last administration that was wholly critical, skeptical, and even antagonistic towards Crypto on the whole.

Once ETFs made it onto the scene, everyone was all of the sudden clamoring for regulation.  Like, "Please sir, I would like for the government to intervene in my business and give me arbitrary rules to follow."

For practical purposes - yes, having clarity around how you're going to be taxed while investing in crypto is helpful.  You can plan your life and business around that.

However - what appears to me to be evident is that the US government in particular, is a terrible nanny when it comes to you building wealth within the financial markets.  It has only become worse since the collapse of 2008, where over-leveraged institutions and shitty sub-prime mortgages wholesale tanked the economy.  Worldwide.  (I'm old enough to remember it, but was not old enough to capitalize on buying a house for what goes for dirt cheap these days.)

In the traditional markets, there are breaker levels that put a lid on potential gains and losses due to what regulators conclude is "extreme volatility."  No such breaker levels exist in the crypto markets aside from the CME (which is a regulated US institution and centralized exchange).

CME Breaker Threshold

The circuit breaker level threshold that stops trading on the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) is a 20% decline in the S&P 500 Index, which triggers a halt for the remainder of the trading day This threshold is coordinated with the cash equity market, and when activated, trading in all U.S.-based equity index futures and options, including E-mini S&P 500 and Micro E-mini S&P 500, will also cease for the rest of the day The 7% (Level 1) and 13% (Level 2) circuit breaker thresholds each result in a 15-minute trading halt, but only if they occur before 3:25 p.m. Eastern Time (Source: Brave Browser AI Search)

Original post here since I can't embed tweets into the post...

Ultimately - the US government is c*ck blocking you, the American citizen to building wealth.

Yeah, I said it.

I say this as apolitically as possible, I truly wish that the government would treat the adults like actual adults.  This idea of personal responsibility and agency has almost completely evaporated and we are seeing how it causes rot at nearly every level of society.  Aside from there being almost a complete erosion of social norms and etiquette out in the world (speaking from the good ol' US of A), this abdication of self-determination has paved the way for the government to regulate the ever-living shit out of the financial markets and make it more difficult for people to make some money and collectively provide value to the markets.  Beyond that, these regulations are clearly favoring the big guys because if they fail, then we collectively feel the pain in some instances...but why not just let them fail?

I remember in after the 2008 crash, I was talking with my dad about the bailouts for the banks and the US auto sector and he said something that really stuck with me, "Why do they get a bail out and if I am a business owner and I fail, why don't I get a bailout too?"

And that pretty much sums it up - when the government intervenes in the economy they are necessarily picking winners and losers.  The US auto industry was absolute trash during that time.  Of course there were knock-on effects of a tanked housing market because if people were upside down and getting squeezed out of their mortgages, they sure as shit weren't going to be buying new cars.  (Enter the patently awful "Cash For Clunkers" plan, thanks Obama.)

Rules of the efficient market state that there are no free lunches.

So, if there is arbitrage, it gets taken quickly and that opportunity collapses.

If a massive fund goes under because they got the hurtin' put on them with a huge short squeeze, then great - thanks for providing the forced liquidity.  Ultimately, they did not do their jobs in managing their risk.  Sucks to suck, right?

If you or I fail to properly manage our risk, we get liquidated and have to start over again from 0.

To bring it back to the topic - Perpetual Futures...

While Coinbase being the fantastically shitty exchange that it is with all of its security flaws (why again is it the choice of exchange to manage ETFs and OTC orders is beyond my comprehension), where basically no one who is at all sane will ever store their crypto there, is not the be-all, end-all of perpetual offerings in the US, it is certainly a start.  My hope is that this opens the door to other exchanges that are worth their salt to enter the US markets and actually give us what we want...however, they will also be hamstrung by Mommy & Daddy in the regulatory bodies telling us what to do with our capital.

Until then...I prefer the ethos that was at the foundation of crypto.  Private and unregulated.

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