CFTC reviews unusual trading activity on Kalshi’s Ether perpetuals

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is taking a closer look at Kalshi’s Ether perpetual futures contracts after analysts flagged a striking pattern: a massive share of reported trading volume consisted of repetitive, fixed-size orders clustering tightly around the same price levels. The review puts one of the more ambitious crypto derivatives launches of 2026 under federal scrutiny before it has even found its footing. Kalshi launched its Ether perpetual futures, traded under the ticker KXETHPERP, on June 4, 2026, one day after the platform rolled out Bitcoin perpetuals. Within the first two weeks, those Ether contracts generated more than $5.5B in cumulative volume. What the data shows Public analyses of Kalshi’s Ether perpetual data found that between 47% and 63% of notional volume on various days in September consisted of trades fixed almost exclusively at values between $5,499 and $5,500, later shifting to roughly $5,425. The volume-to-open-interest ratios observed during the same period ranged from 61x to 174x. A ratio of 174x means the contracts were, in effect, being turned over 174 times relative to the amount of outstanding positions. Approximately 120,000 trades were...