Coinbase takes regulatory step for leveraged stock trading

Coinbase just told US regulators, in polite but unmistakable terms, that it wants American investors to be able to place leveraged, round-the-clock bets on stocks without ever owning a single share. The company filed a comment letter on August 25 with both the CFTC and SEC, responding to a joint request for input on how “swaps” and “security-based swaps” should be defined. The real ask buried in the regulatory language: let US customers trade equity perpetual derivatives. These are synthetic contracts that track the price of stocks, never expire, and can be traded 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with leverage. Coinbase already offers this product to international users with up to 20x leverage on names like AAPL, MSFT, and GOOGL. Now it wants to bring that same capability stateside. What Coinbase is actually proposing The comment letter targets a specific regulatory gray zone. Right now, equity perpetual derivatives sit awkwardly between the jurisdictions of two agencies. The CFTC oversees futures and swaps. The SEC handles securities. When a product looks like a future tied to a security, both agencies have a claim, and neither has created a clean path for offering it to retail ...