Kalshi Pulls Pepe Perpetual Futures Two Days After Filing

KalshiEX LLC withdrew its Pepe perpetual futures filing on October 1, two days after it self-certified the contract with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The frog never reached a live order book.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu perps stayed up. Uniswap perps went live the day before the pull. Five days later Kalshi opened a stock-index perpetual. The exchange did not say why Pepe was the name that came off the docket.

Kalshi Certified a Frog Future, Then Took It Back

Kalshi, a CFTC-registered designated contract market, used Regulation 40.2 to certify KPEPEPERP, a cash-settled Pepe perpetual future with no fixed expiry and no delivery of tokens. The September 29 self-certification letter said the contract would list after close of business that day and stay listed on a continuous basis, with a packet posted at kalshi.com/regulatory/filings.

The CFTC industry docket lists the product as PEPEPERP under organization KEX. By October 1 the CFTC product filing now marked withdrawn carried that status and that date, with a confidential-treatment request still attached. Kalshi gave no public reason.

The filing framed KPEPEPERP as a hedge for people already long the coin in the cash market, including liquidity providers, market makers, and OTC desks. Funding, hours, and settlement were written to track the exchange’s Shiba Inu perpetual. CF Benchmarks was named as the price source.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The filing: Kalshi self-certified KPEPEPERP on September 29 under CFTC Regulation 40.2 and said it would list after the close that day.
• The pull: The CFTC product page shows PEPEPERP as withdrawn on October 1, before a live market opened.
• The neighbors: Dogecoin and Shiba Inu perps remained on Kalshi’s published crypto list, and Uniswap perps were announced live on September 30.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The reason: Kalshi has not said whether staff, a benchmark license, or its own product committee killed the listing.
• A regulator ask: There is no public CFTC letter ordering the withdrawal.
• A refile: Nothing in the docket shows a replacement Pepe contract.

That gap is the whole official record. The rest is the calendar around it.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu Still Trade on the Board

Kalshi’s help center still says the exchange lists perpetual futures on 18 crypto assets and 2 metals, with every crypto contract using CF Benchmarks for funding and settlement. Dogecoin trades as KXDOGEPERP. Shiba Inu trades as KXKSHIBPERP. Pepe is not on that table.

Those two meme names were not a late experiment. Kalshi added Dogecoin and Shiba Inu perpetuals in June, in the same batch as Zcash and NEAR, after it had already opened bitcoin perps in late May. The published roster also runs through bitcoin, ether, solana, XRP, BNB, and Aave, plus gold and silver on Pyth Network.

KALSHI PERPS AROUND THE PEPE FILING

The line through the meme stack is not “no frogs.” It is this frog, on this venue, in this week. Fund wrappers have drawn similar lines, including the crypto ETF that launched without Shiba Inu, even as Kalshi kept a Shiba perpetual on its own board.

The Same Week the Crypto Tape Came Under Review

The Pepe packet landed in a bad week to add another crypto perpetual that would print a lot of small, repeating clips. Public trade records in late September showed ether and bitcoin perps on Kalshi clustering around fixed dollar sizes, a pattern critics read as empty volume. Kalshi said the CFTC had not contacted the firm about an examination and pointed to its market-maker programs instead.

On September 22 the exchange published Kalshi’s account of the repeating trades, arguing that a maker paid to rest fixed-size bids and offers will print the same notional over and over when faster traders lift those quotes.

The fixed size trades are entirely consistent with a single maker putting up resting orders of a fixed size and getting traded against by many takers.

Kalshi, company blog, September 22, 2026

Kalshi wrote that those programs pay for resting liquidity, not for volume, and that self-trades are blocked. On September 28 it told the CFTC it would end its Volume Incentive Program no earlier than October 13, cutting short a schedule that had run to October 1, 2027. The Pepe self-cert went in the next day. The withdrawal landed three days after that notice.

Meme-board talk on October 6 barely paused on the filing. The live chatter was still new-chain launches, not a CFTC PDF. The hedge Kalshi described for OTC desks never became a trade those desks could actually use.

Uniswap Went Live the Day Before the Withdrawal

The Pepe letter was not a one-off. The same day, Kalshi self-certified UNIPERP, a Uniswap perpetual future, under the same 40.2 path, also for listing after the September 29 close. That one did not come back off the board.

Kalshi Crypto posted on September 30 that Uniswap perpetuals were live for trading in America, on Kalshi only. The help-center article that still counts 18 crypto names does not list UNI, so the app and the explainer are not in lockstep, but the exchange’s own product note and the official account both treated Uniswap as open.

Uniswap $UNI Perpetuals are now live for trading.@Uniswap perps in America. Only on Kalshi. pic.twitter.com/YFA2coOoil

— Kalshi Crypto (@Kalshi_Crypto) September 30, 2026

So the week’s filter was not “DeFi token versus meme coin” in any clean way. Uniswap is a governance token. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are meme coins that already cleared Kalshi’s list. Pepe is a meme coin with a CF index and a hedge pitch that reads like the Shiba contract. Only Pepe was pulled.

What the Withdrawn Pepe Contract Would Have Been

The withdrawn terms were not exotic. They were a copy of the Shiba perpetual with a different underlying, which is why the two-day life is so odd on paper.

KPEPEPERP TERMS IN THE FILING

• Payout: Cash-settled in dollars, with no PEPE tokens delivered at any point.
• Tenor: No fixed expiration, listed on a continuous basis after the September 29 close.
• Index: A kPEPE spot price sourced from CF Benchmarks, the same administrator Kalshi uses for its other crypto perps.
• Mechanics: Trading hours, funding, and settlement written to match the Shiba Inu perpetual.
• Users named: Liquidity providers, market makers, and OTC desks with cash exposure to PEPE.
• Listing path: CFTC Regulation 40.2 self-certification, not a 40.3 approval request.

CF Benchmarks is not a missing piece on the public record. The firm’s Single Asset Series statement, versioned October 5, includes a CF Pepe-Dollar Spot Rate among its spot rates. If the index did not exist, that would have been an easy official explanation. Kalshi did not offer it.

Coinbase Already Sells a Pepe Future

U.S. traders were not waiting on Kalshi for a regulated Pepe derivative. Coinbase Derivatives already lists a 1000PEPE perpetual-style future that uses a funding rate to stay near spot and does not expire until December 2030. That contract is a long-dated future with perp-like funding, not a true no-expiry Kalshi-style perpetual, and it is already on a CFTC venue.

PEPE itself did not trade like a coin that needed a Kalshi listing to exist. CoinGecko’s daily figures put the October 6 close at $0.00000428, with a market cap of $1.84 billion and $270 million in volume. On October 7 the market cap was $1.80 billion. On the October 1 withdrawal date the close was $0.00000443, above the $0.00000425 close on the September 29 filing day. The paperwork event did not show up as a crash in those prints.

Holders who want a U.S. hedge already watch how Pepe traded beside Dogecoin in that bounce, because those two names still set the meme beta that desks try to lay off. Kalshi told the CFTC those desks were the point of KPEPEPERP. Then it took the form down.

Five Days Later, a Stock-Index Perp Opened

On October 6 Kalshi opened a US500 perpetual future on the MerQube US Large Cap Index, a cash-settled contract with no expiry and a daily funding payment, and called it the first stock-index perpetual future in America. That product had gone through commission review, not a same-week 40.2 drop-in. It puts Kalshi in a lane long held by traditional index-futures houses, using the same no-expiry design it first built for crypto.

Read in order, the week is a sorting machine. Crypto perps were already under a volume argument. An incentive program was being cut short. A meme contract that looked like Shiba was certified and then withdrawn. A DeFi token went live. A stock-index perp opened. Pepe was the name that did not survive the sort.

THE WEEK AROUND KPEPEPERP

1. September 28, 2026: Kalshi notifies the CFTC that its Volume Incentive Program will end no earlier than October 13, replacing an October 1, 2027 sunset.
2. September 29, 2026: Kalshi self-certifies KPEPEPERP and UNIPERP under Regulation 40.2, both for listing after the close.
3. September 30, 2026: Kalshi says Uniswap perpetuals are live for trading.
4. October 1, 2026: The CFTC docket shows PEPEPERP as withdrawn.
5. October 6, 2026: Kalshi opens the US500 stock-index perpetual.

The CFTC page still lists PEPEPERP as withdrawn. Kalshi’s published crypto roster still has no frog. The desks named in the letter are still hedging Pepe somewhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does a CFTC 40.2 Self-Certification Differ From a 40.3 Filing?

Under Regulation 40.2, a designated contract market certifies that a new futures product complies with the Commodity Exchange Act and may list it after filing, unless the commission steps in. Regulation 40.3 is a voluntary request for commission approval before listing, the path Kalshi used for products such as the US500 index perpetual. KPEPEPERP and UNIPERP both went in as 40.2 notices on September 29; only the Uniswap contract stayed on the path to a live market.

Does CF Benchmarks Publish a Pepe Dollar Index?

Yes. CF Benchmarks’ Single Asset Series benchmark statement, dated October 5, 2026, lists a CF Pepe-Dollar Spot Rate among its spot rates, in the same family as its Dogecoin and Shiba Inu dollar benchmarks. Kalshi’s other crypto perps already settle against CF Benchmarks indices, so a missing Pepe print was not the obvious gap in the public documents.

Does Any U.S. Exchange Already List a Pepe Future?

Coinbase Derivatives lists a 1000PEPE perpetual-style future that expires in December 2030. Each contract is 100,000 units of a 1k Pepe index, which equals 100 million PEPE, and a funding rate is used to keep the future near spot. That is a long-dated, funded future on a CFTC venue, not a no-expiry Kalshi perpetual, and it was already available when Kalshi pulled KPEPEPERP.

When Did Kalshi List Its First Crypto Perpetual?

The CFTC approved Kalshi’s first crypto perpetual in late May, and bitcoin perps opened on the exchange around June 3. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu arrived in June with Zcash and NEAR, taking the crypto set to 13 assets at that time before later adds brought the published count to 18 crypto names plus gold and silver.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a CFTC product filing and related market facts, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, trading advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hedge PEPE, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Uniswap, index futures, or any other contract. Readers who may trade or hold these products should consult a licensed financial adviser or futures broker who can review their own situation. Figures, listings, and filing statuses reflect the cited Kalshi, CFTC, CF Benchmarks, CoinGecko, and Coinbase Derivatives materials as of the dates named in the piece and can change without notice.