Kalshi’s new perpetual futures pulled in more than $5.5 billion in trading volume in their first two weeks, and co-founder Tarek Mansour says the never-expiring contracts are the company’s fastest-growing launch ever in terms of adoption and customers.

He doesn’t want to stop at crypto. Mansour told the Bloomberg Market Structure Conference on Tuesday that Kalshi is talking with regulators about adding more perpetual contracts, with the longer-term goal of stretching them across other asset classes.

Even so, the crypto launch isn’t what fills Kalshi’s order book. Roughly 90% of its volume comes from sports, and the calendar just delivered the perfect pair: a 2026 World Cup unfolding across North America and an NBA Finals that crowned the New York Knicks for the first time since 1973.

The two combined to push Kalshi past $1 billion in daily volume on three straight days this month, a first for the platform.

That sports engine underwrites the $22 billion valuation Kalshi reached in a May funding round, more than DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ:DKNG), the listed sports-betting leader worth about $14 billion.

CME’s Terry Duffy Sees 2007

Perpetual futures are a crypto-born derivative that never expires, unlike a standard futures contract.

A funding rate paid between buyers and sellers keeps the price tethered to spot, giving traders continuous, leveraged exposure with no contracts to roll.

The new product pushes Kalshi into CME Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CME) territory, where the company runs the dominant U.S. venue for regulated crypto futures.

CEO Terry Duffy isn’t hiding his alarm. “I really believe it’s 2007,” he told CNBC, likening the speculation frenzy to the run-up before the housing crash.

His issue is leverage. Offshore perps can run 20x to 250x versus CME’s roughly 5x. Kalshi caps its onshore contracts well below those offshore extremes, but the format still lets traders make big directional bets with little money down.

Wall Street Is Buying In

The boom isn’t only retail. Institutional volume on Kalshi jumped 800% in the six months before its raise, as hedge funds and trading shops began using event contracts to hedge real-world risk. Mansour has said the category could become a trillion-dollar market.

The perpetuals sprint lands as Kalshi keeps pulling away from rival Polymarket, whose monthly volume recently slipped for the first time in eight months.

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