NEW YORK — Binance.US spent 2025 fighting the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is now betting its next growth phase on a different federal regulator — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Steve Gregory, Binance.US’s chief executive, announced at the Rare Evo blockchain conference Wednesday that the exchange intends to file a Designated Contract Market application with the CFTC in August. Cointelegraph reported Gregory’s remarks, which mark the first time a Binance entity has publicly sought CFTC designation as a contract market. A DCM license would authorize Binance.US to offer prediction market contracts under US regulatory oversight — letting participants take positions on outcomes from election results to commodity prices — rather than through the offshore structures that have defined the sector’s growth.
The move positions Binance.US as a direct competitor to Kalshi and Polymarket. Kalshi operates under an existing CFTC DCM license and processed over $3 billion in contract volume during the 2024 US election cycle. Polymarket operates offshore from a US regulatory standpoint but has attracted substantial American trading activity. A licensed Binance.US entering the space would bring substantially larger liquidity infrastructure and a user base built over years of cryptocurrency exchange operations to a market that has grown primarily on retail participation.
The CFTC permits DCMs to trade “futures or option contracts based on any underlying commodity, index or instrument” — language broad enough to accommodate the prediction market contracts Kalshi and Polymarket have successfully listed. DCM applicants must satisfy 23 core regulatory principles covering system safeguards, record maintenance, and conflict-of-interest management. The application process is not fast: the CFTC’s designation review typically extends over several months, placing any practical authorization date well into 2027 at the earliest. At the time of Cointelegraph’s publication Wednesday, the CFTC’s public records contained no evidence of a pending Binance.US application. The company did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
The announcement carries a significant regulatory context. The SEC dismissed its lawsuit against Binance and related entities earlier in 2026, removing the most consequential legal overhang the exchange had carried since 2023. That dismissal freed Binance.US’s leadership to pursue licensing pathways that the active enforcement environment had made politically difficult. The CFTC has historically treated bitcoin and ether as commodities rather than securities — a framework more favorable to exchange operations of the kind Binance.US already conducts. The agency’s track record with crypto classification gives Binance.US a structural advantage in the DCM review that it never possessed in its relationship with the SEC.
The prediction market segment’s regulatory legitimacy has expanded considerably since 2024. The CFTC’s successful defense of Kalshi’s election-contract listings against early legal challenges established a precedent: politically and economically sensitive prediction contracts can function within the existing commodity regulatory framework. That precedent removed the core argument against extending DCM licenses to exchanges seeking similar products. Binance.US’s August application, if filed as announced, will be reviewed within an environment where the CFTC has already demonstrated willingness to defend this asset class in federal court.
Academic research consistently shows prediction markets generate more accurate forecasts of political and economic outcomes than polling or analyst projections — a property that has made them simultaneously valuable as information markets and controversial among participants who prefer election outcomes and commodity prices to remain in separate regulatory categories. The CFTC’s willingness to oversee both has transformed what was three years ago a niche offshore market into a regulated US financial product with established broker-dealer infrastructure. Binance.US’s entry would bring institutional-grade exchange liquidity to a sector that has grown predominantly on retail participation.
The broader market session Wednesday was defined by the Federal Reserve holding rates steady for the fifth consecutive meeting, which generated more than 1,100 points of Dow pressure from investors who had priced in a cut. Cryptocurrency markets absorbed their own version of that pressure, with Bitcoin retreating below $65,000 as a four-session outflow streak from US spot Bitcoin ETFs accumulated $526 million in withdrawals. Binance’s global spot trading volume in July registered $35 billion — a fraction of the $246 billion recorded in November 2024 — context that explains why the exchange’s US subsidiary is seeking product expansion rather than trading-volume growth in a compressed market environment.
What the DCM application does not resolve: whether Binance.US’s parent company’s global compliance history raises questions in the CFTC review beyond the standard 23-principle assessment. The SEC lawsuit dismissal addressed US securities claims; it did not extend to the jurisdictional distinctions between Binance’s global entity and its US-domiciled subsidiary. The CFTC will conduct its own independent review. Whether that review surfaces issues beyond the procedural checklist — and how long those questions would extend any authorization timeline — has not been addressed by Gregory’s announcement. The August filing will clarify what Binance.US believes the CFTC will accept.
