Crypto stocks rip as CFTC clears stock perpetual futures for US exchanges

Riot Platforms ripped 16% higher Tuesday, steering a broad crypto-stock rally that ran past Bitcoin and XRP on Election Day. The spark: the CFTC cleared perpetual futures tied to individual stocks for trading on regulated U.S. exchanges for the first time, with the CFTC and SEC sharing oversight.

That approval drags a crypto-native trading model into mainstream U.S. markets. The same style of trading already powers Hyperliquid, and the shift is a tailwind for exchanges and infrastructure providers set to chase that volume. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig framed it as keeping American traders inside the agency's regulatory framework instead of pushing them offshore to unregulated venues.

The scale is hard to ignore. Perpetual futures notched more than $630 billion in trading volume over the past month, according to DeFiLlama, underscoring the demand now opening up to regulated U.S. platforms. Riot's earnings land Wednesday as the company pivots from Bitcoin mining toward AI and high-performance computing. Analysts expect a 32-cent-per-share loss on about $159.7 million in revenue, an improvement from the prior quarter's deeper loss.

Riot had slipped 7.57% Monday as analysts fretted over AI data-center lease demand. Tuesday's bounce came ahead of earnings, with investors zeroing in on how fast its AI business ramps after the Anthropic deal.

Coinbase drew a downgrade from Morgan Stanley on Monday, according to CoinDesk, dropping to Underweight from Equalweight with a price target cut to $120 from $258. The bank cited slowing trading activity and crypto market uncertainty after the Binance hack. ARK Invest went the other way: Cathie Wood's firm bought roughly $9 million in Coinbase shares and $8 million in Circle shares across Friday and Monday, while trimming about $8 million from Bullish. ARK also added about $646,000 in Robinhood shares Monday.

Strategy pushed back on skeptics by saying Bitcoin has beaten its 2.3% annual breakeven rate in every rolling four-year period since 2014, with a 39.7% annual compounded gain over the latest four-year stretch, Benzinga reported. Peter Schiff questioned whether Strategy's cash reserves can keep supporting STRC's share price after roughly $2.25 billion in buybacks this year. Marathon Digital climbed 9.5% as miners rode higher Bitcoin prices, with its earnings due November 9.