A risky type of trade that has exploded in popularity overseas this year is poised to become more mainstream in the U.S.

Prediction markets platform Kalshi is planning to seek regulatory approval to start offering the country's first regulated perpetual futures tied to single stocks including Tesla, Apple and Nvidia, according to people familiar with the matter.

The contracts-known as perps-let traders bet around the clock and pile on leverage that amplifies their potential gains and losses, with the lack of expiration date further heightening the risks. The bets gained attention earlier this year when conflicts in the Middle East prompted a wave of trading in oil-linked perpetual futures on the decentralized crypto exchange Hyperliquid. The site, which is based in Singapore, isn't technically supposed to be accessible to U.S. residents, but users find ways around its geofencing.

The push into single-stock perps is part of a race among Wall Street's new-age powerhouses to serve investors with all manner of exotic trading opportunities, including bets critics say are risky and hard to understand. Kalshi plans to launch around 60 perps tied to popular exchange-traded funds and single stocks of companies with a market value of at least $100 billion, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

Coinbase Global, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, has also filed paperwork that could help pave the way for the exchange to offer single-stock perps.

In late May, Kalshi and Coinbase received approval to launch the first true perpetual futures in the U.S.-but those were tied to cryptocurrencies. The contracts quickly rose in volume, and Kalshi on Thursday launched perpetual futures linked to gold and silver, also the first of their kind in the U.S.

Some exchange operators say that perpetual futures are riskier than garden-variety futures because of their so-called funding rates, or the payments that traders must make to keep the contract's price aligned with the underlying asset's price. And because perpetual futures allow leverage, skeptics warn they can intensify a downward spiral during periods of market stress.

Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy for Better Markets, a group that pushes for tighter financial regulation, compares single-stock perpetual futures to leveraged single-stock exchange-traded funds, which have triggered massive losses for individual investors from the U.S. to South Korea.

"I think there's just the potential for huge losses, especially amongst individual investors," said Schiffrin. "You're talking about 24/7 trading, so you're going to have the ability to place these bets around the clock. And perpetual futures usually have much more leverage than you have with respect to single stock ETFs."

Kalshi Chief Risk Officer Udesh Jha said that funding rates reduce the risk that traders will suffer downward spirals, and that the lack of an expiration date in perps doesn't mean traders will accumulate more leverage. Jha said that the product is no different than security futures, except cheaper, and that Kalshi perpetuals have the same leverage as other traditional U.S. derivatives exchanges.

On Hyperliquid, the total trading volume (including leverage) in single-stock perpetual futures surged to $212 billion, up from $4 billion at the start of the year, according to data from Blockworks Research.

Since individual equity futures are legally categorized as security futures, companies like Kalshi that want to issue them need approval from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The trading of perps in the U.S. is already being contested.

CME Group in June sued the CFTC over its approval of perps on Kalshi in the U.S., alleging that the regulator violated U.S. law by classifying Kalshi's perps as futures rather than swaps. Kalshi, Coinbase and the CFTC said that they view the lawsuit as an attack on market competition. The CFTC recently moved to dismiss the lawsuit.

Kris Marszalek, chief executive of Crypto.com, said single-stock perpetual futures are already impacting U.S. markets but trade overseas on unregulated venues.

"It makes sense for both regulators to come together and allow this to happen onshore in a more controlled environment where the consumers are protected," he said in a recent interview.