Invest1 publisher2 min readPublished
SGX opens its crypto perpetuals to US desks with $19 million of open interest on the book
Regulation 48.10 lets American hedge funds and prop desks onboard through SGX's existing clearing members in two to four weeks, into a Bitcoin and Ether perpetual book that has traded $5.8 billion since November 2025.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The CFTC authorized Singapore Exchange under Regulation 48.10, the pathway that lets a foreign board of trade offer products to US persons without registering in the United States.
- American hedge funds, asset managers and proprietary trading firms can onboard through SGX's existing clearing members in two to four weeks, with live trading access following in one to two months.
- The Bitcoin and Ether perpetuals had traded $5.8 billion cumulatively, roughly 400,000 lots, by the time the authorization was announced.
- SGX does not accept stablecoins as collateral, and runs the contracts through conventional margin calls, collateral top-ups and central clearing.
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Why it matters
- constraint With open interest equal to about nine tenths of one day's volume, the first US desks through the door have to size positions to the depth they find instead of to their mandates.
- cost A crypto-native desk holding its working balance in stablecoins has to fund SGX margin from cash or securities held somewhere else, so the collateral rule prices the access.
- decision Risk committees that blocked perpetuals on jurisdiction grounds now have a CFTC-authorized venue for them, and the internal question becomes which clearing member carries the business.
- precedent Any foreign venue listing a product no US exchange offers now has a demonstrated route to American money that stops short of a domestic registration.
Divide the $5.8 billion of cumulative turnover by roughly 400,000 lots and the average lot is about $14,500 [9][1]. The peak session prices lower: 11,500 lots for about $145 million, or roughly $12,600 a lot [10][2].
From launch to the end of August 2026, the date of the open interest reading, is about 280 days [8][11]. Across those days, $5.8 billion works out to a daily average of no more than about $21 million [4]. The single busiest session, at $145 million, is close to seven times that [5]. Open interest of about $19 million is roughly nine tenths of one average day's volume [11][7]. It is also a third of one percent of everything the two contracts have traded since they listed [6].
In my view a book that turns over its entire open interest inside a day belongs to market makers and desks holding for hours, not to anyone financing a position for a quarter. The Bitcoin side of that book came to about $12.5 million at the end of August [8].
Regulation 48.10 spared SGX a domestic registration. The CFTC can authorize a foreign board of trade to serve US persons when the venue meets its standards [1][2], the framework that has long carried US traders into the London and Tokyo commodity markets [17]. Dated Bitcoin and Ether futures and options are next on SGX's list [16]. The Crypto Briefing report does not say when the authorization was issued [18].
US flow could arrive and lift open interest by an order of magnitude, in which case the 1,300 lots on the book at the end of August were measuring the absence of American participants [11]. A second path has desks onboarding and trading the perpetuals only against CME's dated contracts, which have dominated regulated US crypto futures, while directional size stays where the depth already sits [15]. A third would be a CFTC-regulated venue listing a perpetual of its own, which none does today, even though perpetuals have been the most traded crypto derivative in the world for years [13][14]. I'd expect depth to cap how much American money clears at SGX this quarter. If open interest is still under $50 million three months after live access opens, the authorization bought permission and very little volume.
What to watch
- Listing dates for SGX's promised dated Bitcoin and Ether futures and options, and whether the same authorization covers US access to them.</p>
- Whether a CFTC-regulated US exchange lists a perpetual of its own once American desks are trading SGX's.
- Whether other foreign boards of trade file for Regulation 48.10 authorization on the same reasoning.