The new Cboe products settle on a single disclosed number, such as Coinbase volume or iPhone sales, and will sit under securities law rather than the commodities regulator that oversees Kalshi.
Prediction markets have a new competitor, and it will be regulated as a stock option.
On Tuesday the Securities and Exchange Commission signed off on a Cboe Global Markets proposal to list options whose payoff turns on one number in a company's own disclosures, Chairman Paul Atkins said in a statement. Each contract pays $1 if its condition is met, such as the disclosed figure reaching the strike, and nothing if it is not.
Twenty-three companies are on the initial list, with more than 100 metrics between them. Among them: Coinbase's trading volume, MARA Holdings' bitcoin production, Robinhood's funded customers, Apple's iPhone revenue, Nvidia's data center revenue and Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y production. The settling number is whatever the issuer reports in its SEC filing, not its press release, an analyst estimate or a share price. Cboe already lists binary options on the Mini-S&P 500 index.
How they differ from event contracts
The options will be cash-settled, European-style and standardized, and they will count as national market system securities. That puts them inside the existing options framework, with exchange rules on margin, trading halts and market-maker quoting, rather than under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees the event contracts offered by Kalshi and others.
Atkins framed the approval as part of an effort at harmonization between the two regulators, and he was explicit that the order neither addresses nor forecloses CFTC jurisdiction over KPI contracts structured for that agency.
Trading has not started. Nothing can trade until Cboe Clear U.S., the exchange's clearinghouse, receives a temporary registration from the agency. Robinhood intends to be the first brokerage to put the contracts in front of retail customers.
The competitive question
For investors, the product unbundles a company's operating results from its share price. A trader who expects Coinbase volumes to be strong but fears the stock is already pricing that in can now bet on the volume number alone.
For the prediction-market industry, it introduces a rival under a different regulator. Kalshi's chief executive argued at a Washington fintech conference this week that state-level oversight would push prediction markets offshore. "We feel pretty good about where we stand overall," he said.
One view is that KPI options will remain a niche, with thin liquidity limited to a handful of closely watched metrics.
The other is that they mark a real escalation in the competition between the two market regulators over who supervises event-style contracts, with the SEC now offering a securities-law path for products that would otherwise go to CFTC-regulated venues.
What to watch
Approval of Cboe Clear U.S.'s registration, the first listing date, early volume in crypto-company metrics, and any response from the CFTC or from Kalshi and Polymarket.