Crypto.com’s derivatives arm became a registered national securities exchange on September 14, 2026, without an SEC approval vote. The agency acknowledged receipt of the filing two days later, and the registration took effect the moment it was submitted.
Key Points
- North American Derivatives Exchange filed Form 1-N on September 14, 2026, with registration effective that same day.
- The SEC acknowledged receipt on September 16 and did not vote to approve the exchange or any product.
- Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company is working with the SEC and CFTC on single-stock perpetual futures.
- Coinbase filed its own notice registration earlier in September, putting two crypto exchanges in the same queue.
- Nadex operates under OG.com and already holds CFTC registration as a designated contract market and clearing organization.
SEC acknowledges a registration it did not approve
North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex), the venue Crypto.com bought from IG Group in March 2022, submitted its notice on Form 1-N. The SEC acknowledged the filing on September 16 and stated the mechanism: “an exchange’s registration as a national securities exchange becomes effective contemporaneously with the submission of the written notice on Form 1-N.“
That is a notice regime under Section 6(g) of the Securities Exchange Act, open to a board of trade that trades security futures products and nothing else. No merits review took place, and no commissioner signed off on a contract. Nadex qualified because it was already a CFTC-designated contract market.
The authorization covers single-stock futures. Crypto.com’s existing equity exposure runs through a different structure: synthetic derivatives tracking 1,500 U.S. stocks and ETFs that hand buyers price movement and no shares.
THE BLOCK: https://t.co/5HaHCncD3G's https://t.co/b7DygbhQw8 is now authorized to offer single-stock futures in the U.S. after the SEC acknowledged its futures exchange's registration filing, CEO Kris Marszalek said.
— The Block (@TheBlockCo) September 17, 2026
The company is also working with the SEC and CFTC to bring… pic.twitter.com/TSeAyGxZEi
Perps still need two regulators to agree
Marszalek drew the line between what Nadex now has and what it wants. “We are working with the SEC and the CFTC to offer single-stock perps in the U.S., which will combine the innovations of the digital asset markets with the U.S. capital markets,” he wrote on X early Thursday.
Perpetual futures carry no expiration date and settle through recurring payments between longs and shorts rather than at maturity. Offshore venues have run that design for years, and perpetual market data shows how concentrated the volume gets. Applying it to Apple or Nvidia raises questions neither agency has answered publicly: which regulator writes the margin rules, and whether U.S. equity market hours survive contact with a 24/7 contract.
Coinbase is in the same queue
Coinbase Derivatives filed a Form 1-N earlier in September, paired with a Form BD-N from Coinbase Financial Markets, seeking to list equity perpetuals. Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad has said the exchange also needs CFTC sign-off before anything lists.
Crypto.com arrives with distribution already attached. Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) agreed this month to route selected event contracts through OG.com, starting with football markets, and took equity stakes in both Crypto.com and OG.com ahead of OG.com’s spin-off as an independent platform.
Why It Matters?
The registration settles a plumbing question rather than a product question. Nadex can list single-stock futures because the statute lets a CFTC market check into the SEC by notice, and that same statute says nothing about contracts with no expiry. What Marszalek described as the goal still sits with two agencies that have never jointly approved an equity perpetual.
For anyone already holding Crypto.com’s synthetic stock products, the filing changes nothing about those positions. They remain derivatives against an issuer, and the registration covers Nadex rather than the consumer app. The open items are worth watching: no tickers have been named, no listing date exists, and neither agency has published a position on how single-stock perps would be margined.
