Ondo Perps CEO Sees ‘Huge Opportunity’ for US Perpetual Futures Under New Model

Ondo Perps CEO David Wells says the US market offers a major opening for perpetual futures, though any domestic product would look different from the offshore platform his company runs today.

Why US Perps Need a Different Structure

Speaking at Ondo’s event in Seoul, Wells said perpetual futures in the US are structured differently than offshore markets and that settlement and clearing would need to change to fit US rules, even if the contract itself looks similar. He said Ondo has not gone far down the road in exploring US expansion and expects two separate models to emerge, one for the US and one for the rest of the world.

Other Firms Moving Toward US Perps

Wells’ comments come as regulators and companies test how perpetual futures could enter US markets. In August, President Trump said the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid into the country legally. Kraken parent Payward has since planned to list Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets for US clients through CFTC regulated Bitnomial Exchange and NinjaTrader Clearing. Coinbase has filed to launch single-stock perps, and Ondo Finance has separately argued to the SEC and CFTC that US equity perpetual contracts fit under existing security futures rules from the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

How Ondo Perps Works Today

Launched in July, Ondo Perps is a Panama-based offshore venue for trading tokenized US stocks, equity ETFs and commodities, offering up to 20x leverage on certain contracts. Wells said its key advantage is letting users post tokenized stocks as collateral instead of stablecoins, so traders stay invested in the underlying asset while trading. On Monday, the platform added trading for 12 Ondo Stocks directly, letting users manage collateral and trading in one place, with plans to expand to all Ondo Stocks.

Trading Volume Since Launch

Since its private beta, Ondo Perps has recorded around $14 billion in trading volume and more than $100 million in open interest, spanning retail traders, institutional market-makers, hedgers and aggregators.