Crypto options in Germany: Kraken opens bitcoin and ether options, and the gate is a questionnaire

You can trade crypto options in Germany, but only through a provider with a MiFID licence and only after passing an appropriateness assessment. Since October 26, 2026, Kraken Pro is one of them: the exchange has opened European-style options on bitcoin and ether to clients in the European Economic Area. What this means for access, settlement and tax had not yet been brought together in German anywhere. This article fills that gap.

Two points matter before going into detail. First, an option is not a coin. You are not buying bitcoin; you are buying a right to a cash amount derived from the bitcoin price. Second, buyers of an option can lose their entire stake, and sellers, according to Kraken's own risk disclosure, can lose considerably more than the margin posted, in extreme cases without limit. Both points decide whether this product suits you at all.

Where can I trade crypto options in Germany?

For retail investors resident in Germany, there are essentially two routes to options on cryptocurrencies in November 2026. The first runs through traditional futures exchanges: the Chicago Mercantile Exchange lists options on bitcoin and ether futures, accessible through online brokers with futures market access and the relevant trading permission. The second route is new and runs through a crypto exchange with a European securities licence. That is the route Kraken has now opened. The difference matters. Most crypto exchanges and crypto providers only offer spot trading in cryptocurrencies, meaning the purchase and sale of the coins themselves. To offer options, a provider also needs authorisation as an investment firm, which is why this product is missing from every ordinary crypto exchange comparison.

It is important to distinguish options from two products that often come up in the same sentence. Crypto ETPs, exchange-traded notes on a coin, are not options and follow their own rules; options on crypto ETFs in the US are a separate product with separate rules. And bitcoin CFDs, as offered by some brokers, are contracts for difference with no expiry date and no option character. An option always has three fixed parameters: a strike price, an expiry date and a premium.

Trading crypto options in Germany: what Kraken switched on on October 26

Two markets can be traded on the Kraken Pro platform: options on bitcoin under the ticker XBT/USD and options on ether under ETH/USD, so exactly the two underlyings BTC and ETH. Expiries range from weekly and monthly to quarterly and semi-annual. Settlement is linear in US dollars, so premium, profit, loss and final settlement all flow in dollars. Kraken says it accepts more than 30 assets as collateral, each with a haircut for its volatility, so existing holdings of bitcoin, ether or USDC can serve as cover.

Access runs through the existing derivatives account. If you already trade futures on Kraken, you need no second account and no second wallet; options appear in the same area as the futures contracts. If you do not yet have a derivatives account, you have to activate one, and the exchange's country list applies. The exchange's restricted list names 15 regions, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Belarus and the United Kingdom. Germany is not on that list. Conversely, the exchange's German product page explicitly advertises futures contracts "for active traders in Germany" and cites leverage of up to ten times for EU clients.

There is one inconsistency you should know about, because it causes confusion when you look it up. Kraken's international product page carries a line above the options offer saying options trading is not available to residents of the US, the EU and certain restricted territories. Yet the same exchange runs a separate address for the EU, eu.kraken.com, where the options page reads "Start trading options in the EU". The international page therefore refers EU clients to the European entity rather than excluding them. What binds you is the European version and what your account actually unlocks after the assessment.

European exercise and cash settlement: how expiry day is settled

The options are European-style. European exercise means an option can only be exercised on its expiry date, not on any day before. American-style options allow this at any time, and this very difference takes away a decision that many beginners get wrong. If you want to take a profit earlier, you sell the position on instead of exercising it.

Cash settlement means you receive the equivalent in dollars at the end; no bitcoin is delivered. The final price is set by a dedicated reference, BTCOPTRR for bitcoin and ETHOPTRR for ether, calculated as a thirty-minute average ending at 08:00 UTC on expiry day. An average over half an hour is chosen deliberately: it can hardly be moved by a single large order. The final settlement trade carries a taker fee capped at 12.5 percent of the option's market value. That cap is the part of the costs you can calculate in advance; the other fees depend, as in crypto trading, on order volume and your account's fee tier.

These reference prices are also why looking only at the spot price on expiry day can be misleading. What counts is the average in the window before 08:00 UTC, not the price you see in the app that evening.

The MiFID II appropriateness assessment is the real hurdle

Under European securities law, options count as complex financial instruments. For them, MiFID II requires an appropriateness assessment. The assessment is a questionnaire on your knowledge of and experience with derivatives, and it is not a formality you can click through: if the result is negative, the provider must warn you, and in practice the feature stays locked. Kraken's own risk disclosure puts it briefly: this assessment must be completed before trading options.

In practice, this means you should expect to provide details on your professional experience, education, investment history and the number of trades you have made in leveraged products. Anyone who has never traded a futures contract fails here more often than at account opening. That is the legislator's intention, not a flaw of the platform. Starting with bitcoin futures is therefore the more realistic first step for many, because the same account mechanics apply but the price depends on only one variable.

One more point that appears in no press release: the appropriateness assessment is not the same as the suitability assessment. A provider only assesses suitability if it advises you or manages your assets. Kraken executes and does not advise. Responsibility for the choice remains with you, and if you are looking for regulated access, it is best to compare the terms in advance in our overview of regulated crypto brokers.

CySEC licence 342/17: who your counterparty is for crypto options

With Kraken's crypto options you deal with two companies, and that matters for liability. The investment services around the options are provided by the Cypriot Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, formerly I.F. Greenfields Wealth Ltd, authorised and supervised by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under licence number 342/17 and registered in Nicosia. The crypto assets themselves are held by the Irish Payward Europe Solutions Limited as custodian under the EU's MiCA crypto regulation.

Kraken adds a sentence you should not skip: each company acts exclusively within its own authorisation, and no joint service or liability across company lines is intended. For you this means supervision of the securities business sits in Cyprus, not with Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority. BaFin is involved through European cooperation, but a complaint about an options trade ends up with the Cypriot authority. The obligations European crypto regulation imposes on providers are summarised in our overview of the MiCA licence and the obligations behind it; custody of the coins is unaffected and remains with the Irish company.

Portfolio margin instead of an upfront premium: why option writers can lose more than their margin

This is the biggest difference from what you know from other venues. With most providers, you pay the full premium immediately when you buy an option. On Kraken Pro, the position is run like a margined futures contract: the premium does not leave your account upfront, and gains and losses are settled continuously against your collateral. That frees capital for other trades and at the same time changes your risk profile, because a loss does not only become visible on expiry day.

Portfolio margin is active from the start and cannot be switched off. It means that positions that hedge each other, such as a bought call against a sold futures contract, tie up less collateral together than each would alone. Hedged structures therefore need less capital. A funding rate as with perpetual contracts does not apply to options; if the same account also holds perpetuals, their funding payments continue.

If an account gets into trouble, Kraken uses a sealed-bid auction instead of forced liquidation through the order book. The mechanism is meant to prevent an emergency sale from pushing the price further against the client. Even so, the hard rule Kraken itself stresses remains: margin requirements can change at any time, and positions are closed if the account falls below the requirement. Anyone who sells options, that is, acts as a writer, is liable beyond the margin posted.

Request for quote without an order book: how a trade comes about on Kraken Pro

In the first phase there is no public order book for options. Trading runs through a request procedure, request for quote or RFQ for short: you build the trade you want in the builder, with up to five legs in one request, send it off and receive time-limited quotes within seconds. You can accept a quote or let it lapse; once you accept, the trade is binding. According to Kraken, a central order book is on the development list.

The practical advantage lies in multi-leg trades. A straddle made of a call and a put is priced as one package and executed together, instead of you placing two separate trades in succession and getting a different price on the second. The drawback is the lack of a preview: without an order book you see no depth and no spread in advance, only the price you receive on request. So compare several requests before you accept.

Crypto options are derivatives transactions: 25 percent flat tax with no holding period

For investors in Germany, this is the part with the biggest consequences, and it is the one most often told wrongly. A cash-settled option on bitcoin is a derivatives transaction for tax purposes. Under Section 20(2) sentence 1 no. 3(a) of the German Income Tax Act, gains from derivatives transactions in which you receive a cash settlement or an amount determined by the value of a variable reference count as investment income. The separate rate for this under Section 32d(1) of the Act is 25 percent, plus the solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable.

The one-year holding period that many know from buying coins does not apply here. That period is set out in Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Act and covers private sales of other assets, which include the sale of the coins themselves. A derivatives transaction does not fall under it. With options, there is therefore no tax-free gain after twelve months of holding, not even with a six-month term. The saver's allowance of 1,000 euros, or 2,000 euros for jointly assessed spouses, under Section 20(9) remains deductible. Actual expenses beyond that cannot be deducted.

Because settlement runs in dollars, there is an extra step that euro spot trading does not have: every gain and every loss must be converted into euros for the tax return. We set out the same logic for futures in detail in our tax rules for crypto futures and perpetuals; the classification as a derivatives transaction applies to options in exactly the same way. Which programs bring the trades neatly into an annual statement is shown in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

The 20,000-euro cap on derivatives losses has been gone since December 2024

This point has the greatest practical value, and almost all older German guides still get it wrong. For years, losses from derivatives transactions could only be offset against gains from derivatives transactions, and only up to 20,000 euros a year. Anyone with a 60,000-euro loss and a 60,000-euro gain in one year still paid tax on 40,000 euros. That special rule has been abolished.

Today's Section 20(6) of the Act contains exactly two restrictions: a separate offsetting pool for losses from the sale of shares, and the requirement of a loss certificate where the losses were subject to withholding tax. A separate pool for derivatives transactions is no longer there. It was removed by the Annual Tax Act 2024, which the Bundesrat approved on November 22, 2024 and which entered into force in early December 2024; the repeal applies to all cases still open. Losses from crypto options therefore reduce your total investment income, including interest and other capital income, and any remaining loss is carried forward to subsequent years.

Offsetting is, however, only possible within investment income. You cannot set an options loss against your salary or rental income, and a deduction under Section 10d of the Act is ruled out. That remains unchanged in sentence 1 of the same provision.

Form KAP: why the tax office only sees the gains through your return

A German securities account withholds the flat tax automatically. A Cypriot broker does not: Payward Europe Digital Solutions is not a German paying agent and does not withhold German capital gains tax. That brings Section 32d(3) of the Income Tax Act into play. Under this provision, you must declare taxable investment income that was not subject to withholding in your income tax return, and the tax office then carries out an assessment, even if you would otherwise not have to file a return.

In practice, this means the following. You need your own record of all trades with date, premium, settlement amount and dollar exchange rate. You enter the result in Form KAP, on the line for investment income without tax withheld. And you keep the records, because nobody will issue you a German tax certificate at year end. Anyone who only notices this in May of the following year has to reconstruct a year of trading from account statements in a foreign currency. Individual tax questions, for example on the treatment of expired options or on classification when trading reaches a commercial scale, belong with a tax adviser; this article explains the legal position and does not replace advice.

Options, futures and spot purchases: which route carries which risk

Three routes lead to a position in bitcoin, and they differ in what can happen in the worst case. With a spot purchase you hold the coin, your loss is limited to the purchase price, and after one year of holding the gain is tax-free in Germany under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. With a futures contract you hold a leveraged position, the loss can exceed your deposit, and for tax purposes 25 percent applies from the first euro. With a bought option the maximum loss is known from the outset, namely the premium, while the upside remains open; with a sold option it is the other way round.

Opportunities and drawbacks are therefore unevenly distributed, which leads to a sober allocation. For long-term holdings, the spot purchase remains the simplest and most tax-efficient route. For short-term directional bets with a fixed loss cap, the bought option is the more precise tool, because time and volatility are priced in. Selling options does not belong in a beginner's portfolio: the return is capped at the premium, while the risk is not capped on the upside. Kraken itself points this out in its risk disclosure.

A final note on volatility, which is often missing. The price of an option also depends on expected volatility, known as implied volatility. That expectation rises ahead of known events and often falls quickly afterwards. An option can therefore lose value even though the price has moved in the direction you expected, simply because the market expects less movement after the event. Anyone who does not factor this in will mistake the loss for a fault of the platform.

Crypto options: nothing works without a derivatives account and the questionnaire

The launch on October 26 opens regulated access to options on bitcoin and ether for investors in Germany, but it does not open it automatically. Three steps stand between you and your first trade.

1. Clarify the venue and the supervisor. Establish which company is your counterparty and which authority supervises it, because that determines where a complaint goes. The licensing status of the major venues is covered in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Tackle the derivatives account and the appropriateness assessment. Without an activated derivatives account and a passed questionnaire, the options area stays locked. If you cannot show enough experience with leveraged products, it is better to gain it first with a simpler product; you can compare the terms for that among the crypto brokers.
3. Keep tax records from day one. Since no German tax is withheld, record-keeping is your job. Start the record with your first trade, not at year end; suitable programs are listed in the comparison of crypto tax tools.

The primary sources for further reading: Kraken's own announcement of the options launch in the EEA and the statutory text of Section 20 of the Income Tax Act.

(As of November 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)