Today we’re launching 24/7 Kalshi’s perpetuals on gold and silver. They are the first of their kind in America, and fully regulated by the CFTC.
The first commodity futures were built to solve a very specific problem. Farmers didn’t like the risk of prices changing over the harvest season, so they created agreements to exchange grain at set prices on specific dates in the future. Because of this specific use case built around crops and the harvest season, futures were designed with an expiration date. All futures contracts since have followed the same structure.
There’s a big shortcoming with that design: not all commodities exposure expires; not all participants are looking for physical delivery or forced to roll on a pre-defined schedule.
Modern futures trading includes real world assets like metals, Bitcoin, fiat currencies, and several other financial assets. Trading these with a structure designed for physical deliveries of wheat and corn doesn’t make sense for a vast majority of participants — but it does generate billions in fees for the companies that control the marketplace. In the modern geopolitical landscape, the news also doesn’t stop on the weekends, but markets do. A different approach is warranted.
Precious metals like gold and silver are great examples of assets that benefit from the perpetual structure. Simple, cheap instruments that enable hedging and speculation with the lowest possible friction.
Most investors looking to get exposure to precious metals are doing so for macroeconomic reasons, but their current options all have flaws:
Traditional futures have costly rollover fees
ETFs are indirect, have high management fees, and provide no leverage
Physical purchases are costly to store, transport, and sell
Perpetuals have none of these downsides. They’re efficient because they concentrate liquidity in one contract, are cheap, trade 24/7, and you don’t have to pay fees every month for no reason. There’s a reason they account for $90 trillion in offshore trading volume in 2025. It’s time Americans got access to perpetuals, too. Today is that day.
