Australia's corporate regulator is signaling that one of crypto's fastest-growing derivatives is outrunning the country's rulebook. Perpetual futures, leveraged contracts with no expiry date, now offer exposure that looks much like a contracts for difference (CFDs), yet are typically sold to Australians through offshore platforms that sit outside the regulator's reach.That warning sits inside a report the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) released today (Tuesday), alongside a Sydney roundtable of market and financial-services leaders. Perps and CFDs Start to Look Like the Same TradeThe report draws a direct line between perpetual futures and CFDs. Both give traders leveraged synthetic exposure to an asset without owning it, and both run on margin. The structural split is who sets the terms. A CFD is a bilateral over-the-counter contract where the provider fixes financing charges and margin, while perps rely on a funding rate exchanged between long and short positions.Regulators have already started closing that gap. Earlier this year ESMA told firms that perpetual futures meeting the CFD definition already fall under the bloc's intervention measures, regardless of how a product is branded.Spain went further, instructing Cyprus-licensed brokers to treat both perps and spot-quoted futures as CFDs under its retail rules.For European retail clients, that reading carries a hard cost. Leverage on crypto perps would be capped at 2x rather than the 10x some venues advertise, a shift that could strip much of the product's appeal before it scales.The United States is moving the other way. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in early 2026 it would build a framework to bring perps onshore and recapture liquidity that has drifted to offshore venues.[#highlighted-links#] According to the report, the global perpetual futures market remains heavily concentrated on a handful of centralized exchanges, mainly Binance, OKX and Bybit, while on the decentralized side Hyperliquid averaged 72% of the perp-DEX segment through 2025.The Offshore Gap Australia Has Not ClosedFor ASIC, the problem is jurisdictional. The report notes that novel crypto-native products such as perpetuals and event contracts are typically offered to Australian investors through offshore venues, and may sit outside existing regulatory perimeters. ASIC may need to decide whether such products fall within its remit or another agency's, the report said.Perps are also creeping into regulated territory, which complicates the picture further. The Singapore Exchange launched Bitcoin and Ether perpetual futures for institutional and accredited investors in November 2025. In March 2026, Hyperliquid listed the first licensed S&P 500 perpetual contract through Trade[XYZ], pushing the format from crypto into a mainstream equity benchmark.ASIC Chairwoman Sarah Court framed the broader stakes carefully at the roundtable, cautioning against change for its own sake. "Innovation is not an end in and of itself," she said, adding that it needs a clear purpose and public benefit.Gamified Apps and Copy Trading Draw Regulatory FireThe report devotes heavy attention to how retail investors are being nudged into trading more, and into riskier products. Gamification features such as notifications, points and rewards are now a routine part of mobile brokerage and crypto apps rather than an outlier.The evidence cited is pointed. A UK randomized experiment involving more than 9,000 people found that digital engagement practices lifted trading frequency by 11% to 12% and risk-taking by 6% to 8%, with stronger effects on younger and less financially literate users. An Ontario regulator study found points and badges drove nearly 40% more trades despite carrying negligible economic value.Copy trading sits alongside it as a supervisory headache. The report cites eToro, the largest dedicated player, which reported 40 million registered users and 3.9 million funded accounts for 2025, with more than 5,000 investors in its copy program. The concern, the report said, is that copy trading blurs the line between execution-only brokerage, investment advice and portfolio management. The risk is sharpest where copied trades flow into leveraged products like CFDs, a pattern that FinanceMagnates.com has reported smarter copy-trading tools are already pushing against prop-firm controls.The Clock Extends Toward 24-Hour MarketsA third strand runs through extended trading hours, where the report tracks a shift from broker overlays to exchange-level operation. US venues have moved fastest. Nasdaq filed to run 23 hours a day, five days a week, targeting the second half of 2026, while NYSE Arca won approval for substantially longer weekday hours and 24X National Exchange launched its SEC-approved 23/5 platform.Brokers got there first. Robinhood already offers 24/5 trading on alternative venues, and the report notes that the real constraint is post-trade plumbing rather than matching engines. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation's NSCC has moved to extend clearing hours to keep pace.Outside the US, the shift has been more measured. SIX Swiss Exchange stretched its day to nearly 14 hours for structured products, and Deutsche Börse added early and late retail windows on Xetra, while the European Union and UK have held back from market-wide overnight trading.A Push to Keep Australian Markets CompetitiveASIC Commissioner Simone Constant tied the threads together around competitiveness, arguing that technology has eroded the barriers that once kept capital at home. "Geographic moats look like a thing of the past," she said.The report estimates that digital-finance efficiency gains could reach around US$2.7 trillion a year globally and roughly AU$24 billion annually in Australia, drawn from cutting manual processing, settlement failures and trapped collateral. It also flags the other side of the ledger, warning that reliance on a small set of AI models, data vendors and cloud platforms could turn business-level risk into a systemic concern, and that gamified and social trading could amplify retail harm.ASIC said the roundtable was the first in a series, and that it would publish a summary of the themes and practical actions that emerge. Whether that produces a concrete pathway, rather than another warning, is the question the agency has left open.The agency commissioned the study from the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre and is using it to argue that Australia must move faster or watch capital and innovation migrate elsewhere. This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.

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