US crypto perpetual futures are back before a federal court. On Sep 3, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a motion to dismiss the civil suit the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group brought in June 2026 over the agency's approval of perpetual futures tied to the spot price of Bitcoin.
In June, CME sued after the CFTC approved Bitcoin-spot perpetual futures for prediction-markets platform Kalshi and issued a no-action position for similar products on Coinbase. CME argued Chair Michael Selig acted on his own without a full five-commissioner panel and that treating perpetual futures as swaps went against Congress.
In the motion, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, CFTC lawyers said any CFTC-registered exchange can list perpetual futures on digital assets, so CME cannot show a concrete likely financial injury. They dismissed the suit as 'much ado about nothing.'
What this is not: a price move. It is a legal question over how crypto perpetual futures are classified before US regulators.
Cointelegraph