Robinhood readies US crypto perpetual futures with leverage caps and low fees
DeFi & Yields ·
The brokerage plans a multi-month rollout of leveraged crypto contracts, an AI trading helper, and weekend market access for American users.
Robinhood has unveiled plans to bring perpetual futures trading to eligible customers in the United States, covering eight digital assets, according to CryptoPotato. The lineup includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink and Hyperliquid, with Bitcoin and Ethereum positions eligible for up to 10x leverage while the remaining six coins are capped at 3x. Trading costs are set at 0.01% per trade, a rate the company frames as among the cheapest available in the sector.
Unlike dated futures, these perpetual contracts have no expiry, letting traders hold long or short positions indefinitely as long as they maintain sufficient margin. Robinhood Derivatives intends to route the contracts through Bitstamp, and the app will display liquidation prices in real time alongside stop-loss and take-profit order options, plus alerts when a position nears risk. The company has not committed to a firm launch date, saying only that the rollout is expected within the coming months.
Alongside the leverage product, Robinhood is introducing an in-app assistant called Robinhood Agents, designed to help users build trading strategies and research markets, with manual approval required before trades execute by default. More than 15,000 accounts have opened agentic trading access since the tool debuted in May, and Robinhood says these agents are being used nearly 30 million times daily, based on figures cited by The Block. The broader push also folds in weekend trading access for perpetual futures and stocks, part of what CoinDesk describes as an effort to attract more active traders to the platform.
The announcement lands amid a wider industry shift toward crypto derivatives. Coinbase has filed registrations with US regulators for single-stock perpetual futures, though those filings carry no guaranteed timeline. Bybit, meanwhile, has taken a more aggressive stance on leverage, launching forex perpetuals with up to 100x exposure available around the clock, far exceeding Robinhood's 10x ceiling on its riskiest offerings.
Seven distinct outlets have now covered aspects of Robinhood's expansion, spanning the perpetuals product, the Bitstamp partnership, and weekend trading plans. What remains unclear is the exact launch date, how the 0.01% fee structure will hold once the promotional period tied to year-end ends, and how regulators will treat the leveraged contracts alongside Robinhood's separately planned earnings-linked binary options offered through Cboe.