Ondo Cites $8B Offshore Volume in Stock Perpetuals Push

Ondo Finance is urging the SEC and CFTC to bring perpetual futures tied to individual US-listed stocks onshore, arguing in three comment letters that existing securities law already accommodates the product without new rulemaking. The push targets a market Ondo’s Panama-based affiliate already serves outside the United States through stablecoin-settled perpetuals.

Ondo’s Three Comment Letters on Stock Perpetuals

Ondo submitted the three letters on Aug. 24 to the SEC and CFTC, addressing product classification, modern margining practices and the use of onchain market data. The core argument across all three: perpetual stock futures fit within the country’s existing security futures framework, and regulators don’t need to build a new category to accommodate them.

The classification letter leans on a structural point about how perpetuals function without an expiration date. Ondo says scheduled funding payments perform a role similar to expiration in traditional futures, keeping the contract’s price tethered to the underlying stock through recurring payments between long and short positions rather than through a settlement date.

Ondo isn’t arguing from theory alone. Its Panama-based affiliate already runs stablecoin-settled perpetual futures on individual US-listed stocks for eligible users outside the country, and that platform recorded $8 billion in cumulative trading volume as of Aug. 14 – roughly six weeks after launch, according to the company’s SEC submission. That volume sits alongside a broader shift toward synthetic exposure products, a trend also visible in pre-IPO perpetuals offering synthetic exposure to private companies, where traders get price exposure without the underlying settlement mechanics of a traditional listing.

Ondo’s broader point to regulators is that the underlying assets aren’t obscure or offshore-only instruments. Many of the stocks referenced in its offshore perpetuals trade principally on US exchanges, meaning the demand for exposure already exists domestically – it’s just being routed through a Panama-based venue instead of a regulated US market.

Market and Competitive Context

The filing lands in a moment when political attention is already turning toward onshoring offshore perpetuals markets. President Donald Trump said in August that CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion, though neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid had publicly detailed how that access would work.

Hyperliquid is best known for its onchain perpetual futures market, and the token reaction to Trump’s comments was immediate. HYPE jumped more than 20% following the remarks and had gained nearly 49% over the preceding month, trading around $81 as of the Wednesday referenced in Cointelegraph’s reporting, according to CoinGecko data.

Ondo’s own footprint in tokenized real-world assets gives its regulatory ask added weight. The company ranks fourth among tokenized RWA managers with about $2.6 billion in distributed value as of the same Wednesday, per RWA.xyz – a separate figure from the $8 billion in offshore perpetuals trading volume, reflecting Ondo’s broader tokenization business rather than the derivatives product at the center of these letters.

Regulatory or Structural Implications

The jurisdictional split matters here. The SEC oversees securities markets while the CFTC regulates US derivatives markets, and a product like a perpetual future tied to an individual stock sits at the seam between the two. The agencies signed a memorandum of understanding in March specifically to harmonize oversight in areas where their authority overlaps, which is the exact terrain Ondo’s letters are asking them to navigate together.

Ondo’s ask isn’t limited to classification. The letters also push regulators to account for modern margining practices – settling exposure more frequently and measuring risk in real time – and to recognize onchain market data as a legitimate substitute for legacy reporting infrastructure. That framing echoes a broader regulatory direction already visible elsewhere: the SEC proposed overhauling its decades-old transfer agent framework this week, citing growing demand for blockchain-native recordkeeping and tokenized securities as the agency reexamines rules built for older market infrastructure.

None of this guarantees a fast resolution. Ondo is asking the SEC and CFTC to apply existing rules rather than write new ones, but that still requires both agencies to agree on classification, oversight responsibilities and how a stablecoin-settled, funding-rate-driven contract fits into frameworks that predate onchain settlement entirely. The broader question of how the CFTC’s rulemaking authority over crypto derivatives evolves – a live issue tied to pending crypto market structure legislation – will likely shape how quickly, or slowly, this moves.

What Comes Next

The SEC and CFTC now have Ondo’s comment letters in hand as both agencies work through how existing rules apply to onchain products more broadly, including perpetual futures and tokenized securities. Nothing in the record so far indicates an approval, a decision, or a timeline for when – or whether – US traders will get direct access to stock perpetuals through this pathway.

What’s clear is that the pressure campaign is broadening. Between Ondo’s filings, the Hyperliquid-related political attention, and the SEC’s own transfer-agent overhaul proposal, regulators are fielding multiple simultaneous pushes to modernize market structure around onchain derivatives and tokenized equities. Traders watching HYPE, ONDO, and related tokens should treat this as an early-stage regulatory process rather than a confirmed product launch – the letters open a conversation, they don’t close one.

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