Robinhood Announces Perp Futures With 10x Leverage for US Customers: “Markets don’t work without traders”

Robinhood plans to offer eligible customers in the United States perpetual futures on eight cryptocurrencies, with up to ten times leverage on Bitcoin and Ethereum. The broker announced this on the evening of September 29, 2026, at its own HOOD Summit conference in Houston, alongside a whole series of further trading products. None of it is tradable yet: the statement names no launch date and speaks instead of the coming months.

For an investor in Europe the news is still more than a note about an American broker. Robinhood runs its perpetuals business in Europe over the same technical chain, and the leverage unlocked there differs sharply from the American figures. On top of that comes a point most reports leave out: for tax purposes a leveraged contract on Bitcoin is something entirely different from a Bitcoin sitting in your own account.

What Robinhood announced: eight perpetual futures, 10x leverage on BTC and ETH

According to the company statement, eligible US customers will be able to take long and short positions on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink and HYPE, with no expiry date. Leverage runs up to 10x on the Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts and 3x on the other six. Until the end of the year Robinhood says it will charge one basis point per trade, or 0.01 percent of the contract value. The contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives, a futures commission merchant registered with the US regulator, and run technically over the Bitstamp trading platform.

The announcement did not stand alone. In the same breath Robinhood presented an AI trading function built into the app, weekend trading for selected US equities, which is still subject to regulatory clearance, and so-called earnings contracts on the key figures of individual companies. Chief executive Vlad Tenev framed the package in the statement: Ownership doesn't work without markets, and markets don't work without traders. The company, he said, is delivering tools that were once reserved for hedge funds, large banks and quant firms. The direction is on the record: more leverage, more automation, longer trading hours, and all of it for an audience of roughly 29 million customers.

The price backdrop is quiet. Bitcoin was trading at around $84,100 on September 30 at about 5:50 pm Central European time, a good one percent above the previous day, with Ethereum at about $2,680 (data: CoinGecko). No price reaction to the announcement can be read out of those figures, and for a product launch that is still months away none would be expected.

Perpetual futures without an expiry date: how the funding rate works

A perpetual future is a futures contract on an underlying asset that has no delivery date and no expiry. In theory you can therefore hold a position open indefinitely. To keep the contract price glued to the spot price anyway, there is the funding rate: a balancing payment that flows between the long side and the short side at fixed intervals. When the contract trades above the spot price, the longs pay the shorts; when it trades below, the payment runs the other way.

One basis point sounds small, the funding rate is the bigger item

The 0.01 percent trading fee is rarely the decisive cost block for a leveraged position. Anyone holding a long position for weeks pays the other side continuously in a market with a positive funding rate, and those payments add up regardless of whether the price moves in the desired direction. How that item works out is broken down in our explainer on perp DEXs. Before the first position it is worth looking at the funding history of the contract you want to trade instead of comparing only the fee line.

Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp: the chain of broker, clearer and exchange

Behind the single app sit several companies, and with derivatives that is not a formality. The customer holds the account at Robinhood Derivatives, a separate entity registered with the regulator for futures trading. The perpetual contracts are executed and settled over Bitstamp, the trading platform Robinhood took over in 2025. For you that means the counterparty to your position is not the broker whose interface you are operating.

Anyone who wants to know how well such a chain holds when it matters looks at two things. First, which company is supervised in which country, because that decides which investor protection applies at all. Second, what happens to an open position when a contract is discontinued. Coinbase struck ten perpetual futures at the end of August and force-settled open positions in the process; a provider taking a derivative off the market again is not a theoretical case. An overview of the venues that offer perpetual contracts, and of their terms, is in our comparison of perp trading venues.

Liquidation price and stop-loss: where leverage ends the position

Robinhood states explicitly in the announcement that customers can set stop-loss and take-profit orders, see their liquidation price in real time and receive a warning when a position comes under threat. That is standard for leveraged products and should not be mistaken for safety. The liquidation price is the level at which the posted margin is used up and the trading platform closes the position without asking.

The arithmetic behind it is uncomfortably simple. At ten times leverage a price move of roughly ten percent against the position is enough to eat up the stake; at three times leverage it takes around 33 percent. Bitcoin has repeatedly shown daily moves of that size in recent years. Anyone treating leverage as a return amplifier passes over the fact that it shortens the holding period you can sit through in purely arithmetic terms. A stop-loss only helps if it sits far enough away from the liquidation price to take effect first.

Perp futures in Europe: 3x leverage over Bitstamp, not 10x

The ten times leverage in the announcement applies to US customers. Robinhood has been offering crypto perpetuals in Europe since 2025, routed over the perpetual futures exchange of Bitstamp, and there leverage was capped at three times. Ten times has so far been reached in Europe only in a different product group: since July 2026 there have been perpetual contracts on commodities, ETFs and currencies, on gold, silver, crude oil and the euro-dollar pair among others, and for these the provider names up to 10x.

Whether you get the offer at all is a second question. Robinhood says it has extended its platform to 30 European countries, but publishes no public list of which contracts are enabled in which country. What applies to you is in the terms of business shown to you when the account is opened, not in a press release out of Houston. You make that comparison before the deposit, not afterwards.

MiCA covers spot, MiFID II covers derivatives: the legal framework for European investors

Here lies the difference that is missing from most reports. The European crypto regulation MiCA governs trading in crypto assets themselves, meaning the purchase of a coin against euros and its custody. A perpetual future on Bitcoin is not a crypto asset in that sense but a financial instrument: it falls under the markets directive MiFID II and, in Germany, under the Securities Trading Act. Robinhood itself describes its European platform as regulated under MiCA and MiFID II, which maps exactly that split.

Classification as a futures contract, and investor protection

In practice that means the duties arising from MiFID II apply to derivatives trading, from the appropriateness test through cost transparency to the key information documents. Conversely, the MiCA rules on the custody of client assets help you little with an open futures position, because there you own no coin but a claim under a contract. What obligations the regulation imposes on providers in the crypto business, and where its limits lie, we have written up in our overview of the MiCA licensing duties.

Open around the clock: the weekend without a closing bell

Perpetual futures on cryptocurrencies trade continuously, at night and at the weekend as well. That is convenient and it is a risk many notice only the second time around: a leveraged position can be liquidated on a Sunday morning while the account holder is asleep. That is precisely why Robinhood has the real-time display of the liquidation price and the warning message in the package. Neither replaces a position size that can survive a night without supervision.

The planned weekend trading for US equities points in the same direction, but is still subject to regulatory clearance and initially covers a selected list of stocks. For European investors that is for now a piece of news about the American market. The trend behind it, the disappearance of the closing bell and of the weekend, is not reaching the crypto market only now; it has shaped it since its beginnings.

Tax: the holding period applies to spot, not to perpetual futures

This point costs the most money in practice, and it is regularly overlooked when the eye is on leverage and fees. If you buy Bitcoin and hold it privately, Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies: after a holding period of one year the disposal gain stays tax free. A perpetual future, by contrast, is a futures contract. Gains from it count as investment income under Section 20 of the Income Tax Act and are charged at 25 percent withholding tax, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. A holding period after which something becomes tax free does not exist there.

Anyone implementing a price view through a leveraged contract instead of through the coin itself is therefore trading a possible tax exemption after twelve months for a fixed charge on every gain. With a short-term position that is irrelevant, because within the first year the spot gain is taxable too. With a position you wanted to hold for a long time anyway, it is an expensive detour.

Losses from futures contracts since the 2024 Annual Tax Act

One detail has shifted in favour of investors. For years, losses from futures contracts could be offset only up to 20,000 euros a year and only against gains from similar transactions, a separate loss pot under Section 20 paragraph 6 of the Income Tax Act. The legislator scrapped that restriction outright with the Annual Tax Act 2024, promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette on December 5, 2024, retroactively for 2024 and for all open cases. Losses from perpetual futures have since been offsettable against the remaining investment income. How you document the positions for that in the first place is a task of its own, and an account with a foreign broker will not hand you a German tax certificate.

What the announcement already confirms and what is still open

Confirmed is the content of the announcement: the eight underlyings, the leverage steps of 10x and 3x, the one basis point fee until the end of the year, the entities Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp, the protective functions named. It can be read in the statement of September 29, 2026.

Open, by contrast, is more than the headlines suggest. Robinhood names no launch date, only the coming months. Who the eligible customers are is not in the statement. Whether and when the American leverage steps get a European counterpart is likewise open, and that would be a supervisory question, not a technical one. Several news sites reported the announcement on September 30 as a completed launch; the primary source does not support that. If you want to trade the contract, the enablement in your own account is the only reliable proof.

Robinhood perp futures: Your next three steps

1. Look at what your account actually releases. Leverage step, available underlyings and fee model are in your provider's terms, not in the press release. Which houses offer crypto derivatives to customers in Europe, and under whose supervision they stand, is shown by our broker comparison.
2. Settle the tax side before the first position is open. Futures contract or spot decides on holding period and withholding tax, and you have to keep the documentation yourself. Tools for that are in the overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
3. Work out the liquidation price, not the price target. Set the position size so that a night without supervision does not end it, and compare funding rates instead of only trading fees. The terms of the individual venues are in the comparison of perp trading venues.

(As of September 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)