As a retail client in Germany, you can trade crypto futures legally on six large exchanges that hold an EU licence as an investment firm or trading venue: Kraken, Coinbase, OKX, Gemini, Robin
As a retail client in Germany, you can trade crypto futures legally on six large exchanges that hold an EU licence as an investment firm or trading venue: Kraken, Coinbase, OKX, Gemini, Robinhood and One Trading. All six cap retail leverage on Bitcoin at 10x. The differences lie in contract design, fees, the currency in which you post collateral and the regulator responsible for your money. This comparison reflects the position as of November 4, 2026.
A crypto future is a derivatives contract on the price of a cryptocurrency: you use leverage to bet on rising or falling prices without buying the coins themselves. The most common form is the perpetual future, or perp, a future with no expiry date that a regular balancing payment keeps close to the spot price. How these contracts work in detail is explained in our guide Crypto futures trading: perpetual futures explained. This piece deals with the next question: on which exchange do you trade them, and what does it cost?
A licence under the MiCA crypto regulation is not enough for crypto futures. MiCA covers buying, exchanging and holding crypto assets. Futures and perpetuals, by contrast, are derivatives and therefore financial instruments under the MiFID II directive. An exchange offering you futures in Germany therefore needs a second authorisation, as an investment firm or as the operator of a trading venue. What the requirements of a MiCA licence look like and which obligations crypto companies must meet by the end of 2026 is set out in our overview of the obligations under the MiCA licence.
Almost all large providers have set up or acquired separate entities in an EU country for their derivatives business. Cyprus and Malta are popular, as their regulators CySEC and MFSA supervise numerous investment firms from the forex and CFD business. With this licence, the entities may offer their services across all member states via the EU passport, Germany included. BaFin is not the primary supervisor for these providers, but it does oversee the rules on distribution to German retail clients.
For you, the licence has three practical consequences. The exchange must assess your knowledge before you are allowed to trade, and it must hold client money separately from its own assets. And in a dispute, there is a regulator and an ombudsman in the EU you can turn to. At exchanges without an EU licence, none of this applies.
The table summarises what the providers state in their product pages, help articles and announcements. Leverage here means the highest leverage a retail client in the EU gets on Bitcoin.
Exchange Entity and regulator Product Retail leverage In the EU since Kraken Payward Europe Digital Solutions, Cyprus (CySEC) Perpetuals and dated futures up to 10x May 2025 One Trading One Trading, Netherlands (AFM, licensed as an OTF trading venue) Perpetuals on BTC/EUR and ETH/EUR, later XRP/EUR up to 10x May 2025 for retail clients in DE, NL and AT Robinhood Robinhood Europe, Lithuania (Bank of Lithuania) Perpetuals on crypto, ETFs, commodities and FX up to 10x (3x at launch) Summer 2025 Gemini Gemini Intergalactic EU Artemis, Malta (MFSA) Perpetuals settled in USDC 10x as standard for EU retail clients September 2025 Coinbase Coinbase Financial Services Europe, Cyprus (CySEC) Five-year futures with hourly funding, plus monthly and quarterly futures up to 10x March 2026 OKX OKX Europe Markets, Malta (MFSA) X-Perps: five-year futures, plus equities, gold, silver and oil up to 10x April 2026The two oldest offerings come from Kraken and One Trading, both dating from spring 2025. Kraken bought a Cypriot investment firm for the purpose and has offered perpetuals and fixed-expiry futures to clients in the European Economic Area since May 2025. One Trading, the former exchange from the Bitpanda orbit, runs its own trading venue in the Netherlands and opened it to retail clients from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands in May 2025. One particular feature: One Trading's contracts are denominated in euros, so you do not have to calculate in dollars or stablecoins.
Coinbase and OKX joined in 2026, both with the same structure: the two exchanges' contracts formally run for five years and are kept in line with the spot price through a funding rate. In trading, they behave like perpetuals. Gemini launched perpetuals in USDC in September 2025, Robinhood in summer 2025 with initially 3x leverage; the company now lists up to 10x on its EU product page. Since June 2026, OKX has also offered contracts on large US equities, gold, silver and oil, while Robinhood announced contracts on ETFs, commodities and currencies in July 2026.
Whether a contract counts as a future or a contract for difference determines the permitted leverage. Illustration, AI-generated
Anyone familiar with the big international exchanges is used to 50x or 100x leverage. In the EU, the retail limit at all six providers is 10x. Gemini's announcement does mention up to 100x, but that offer is aimed at experienced and professional investors; according to its help page, the standard for EU retail clients is 10x.
The reason is regulatory. In a public statement on February 24, 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, said that derivatives marketed as perpetual futures are likely to fall under the national measures for contracts for difference. A contract for difference, or CFD, is a bet on the price difference of an underlying asset with no expiry date, settled in cash. Since 2018, CFDs on crypto assets have been subject to a maximum retail leverage of 2:1. On top of that come a forced close-out as soon as collateral falls to half the required minimum margin, protection against losing more than the account balance, and a mandatory risk warning. How this classification came about and what the industry argues against it is covered in our analysis Perpetual futures and the CFD rules.
According to their own product pages, all six exchanges continue to offer retail clients up to 10x leverage. The 10x cap is self-imposed and sits well below what platforms outside the EU offer. Whether it holds for good depends on how national regulators implement the ESMA statement.
This is where the providers part ways. Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood and One Trading list genuine perpetuals with no expiry date. Coinbase and OKX rely on futures with a five-year term. For you as a trader, the difference is barely noticeable day to day, since a position will long have been closed before five years are up. Legally, it matters a great deal: a future with a fixed expiry date is not a contract for difference, so the CFD requirements, and with them the 2:1 cap, do not apply.
OKX openly justifies the design by saying that pure perpetuals are not readily permissible under MiFID II. On the X-Perps product page, the exchange lists leverage of up to 10x, fees from 0.02 percent for makers and 0.05 percent for takers, and collateral in Bitcoin, Ether, Solana or stablecoins. Coinbase settles the funding rate on its five-year futures hourly and marks gains and losses to market once a day.
A residual risk remains for providers of genuine perpetuals: if regulators follow the ESMA line strictly, they could have to limit retail clients to 2x leverage. If you are choosing an exchange today, you should know that. Low-leverage traders will notice little; anyone who relies on 10x should keep an eye on contract design.
With futures, you pay two kinds of costs: the trading fee for opening and closing, and the funding rate for as long as the position is open. The trading fee depends on whether you place an order in the order book as a maker or take an existing order as a taker. Takers pay more, and anyone placing a market order is always a taker.
The providers' fee schedules for the lowest volume tier:
A worked example shows why the differences matter. You post €1,000 in margin and open a €10,000 position with 10x leverage, both as a taker. At 0.05 percent, you pay €5 to open and roughly another €5 to close, €10 in total, or 1 percent of your margin. At 0.20 percent, it is €20 each way, €40 in total, or 4 percent of your margin, before the price has moved at all. Frequent traders will see this gap in their account within a few weeks.
The funding rate comes on top. According to its documentation, One Trading exchanges it between the long and short sides every four hours, Coinbase every hour. In calm markets, long positions usually pay. For a position held for several weeks, that can cost more than the trading fee.
10x leverage moves a large position with little margin, in both directions. Illustration, AI-generated
Margin is the collateral you post for a futures position. The ratio of position value to margin gives the leverage. If losses push the margin below the maintenance margin, the exchange closes the position by force: that is liquidation. At 10x leverage, a counter-move of just under 10 percent is enough; with Bitcoin, that can happen in a single day in volatile weeks.
The currency in which you post collateral differs markedly between providers. One Trading settles in euros, which saves you the detour via stablecoins and the exchange-rate risk against the dollar. Gemini settles its perpetuals in USDC. OKX accepts several assets as collateral, including Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoins. Kraken also allows several types of collateral but then charges conversion fees and, for losses not covered in dollars, hourly costs.
Crypto as collateral sounds convenient but has a catch: if the price falls, your collateral loses value at the same time as a long position. Liquidation then comes sooner than a calculation with fixed leverage would suggest. For beginners, collateral in euros or a stablecoin is therefore usually the calmer choice.
Before you may trade futures on any of the six exchanges, you have to fill in a questionnaire. For complex financial instruments, MiFID II requires an appropriateness assessment: the exchange must establish whether you have enough knowledge and experience to understand the risks. Typical questions cover how often you have traded derivatives in recent years, whether you can explain leverage and liquidation, and your occupation or education.
If the result is negative, the exchange may in many cases still open trading to you, but it must warn you explicitly. Some providers block access entirely or initially enable only low leverage. Gemini also distinguishes between retail and professional clients; as a professional client you get more leverage but lose parts of investor protection. Switching only makes sense if you genuinely meet the requirements and understand the consequences.
Some well-known names are missing from the comparison. Bybit EU holds its MiCA licence in Austria, but only applied for a MiFID II licence for derivatives in September 2025. Until it is granted, the EU entity may not distribute futures to retail clients in the EU. Backpack EU, the successor to FTX EU, holds a licence from Cyprus's CySEC and has offered more than 40 perpetuals with up to 10x leverage since September 2025. Backpack does not publish a list of permitted countries; whether you can trade from Germany only becomes clear when you sign up.
There are also decentralised exchanges for perpetuals, so-called perp DEXs such as Hyperliquid. There you trade directly from your own wallet, without an account and usually without identity verification, often with considerably more leverage. These platforms have no EU licence: there is no leverage cap under EU law, no negative balance protection and no regulator you can turn to. They also bring risks of their own, such as smart contract bugs.
If you are looking for futures with a fixed expiry date, there is a third route: the futures exchanges. Eurex in Frankfurt lists futures on Bitcoin and Ether, the CME in Chicago micro contracts on Bitcoin. They are accessible through a broker with futures trading; our crypto broker comparison shows which providers offer this.
For tax purposes, futures and perpetuals are forward transactions under section 20(2) of the German Income Tax Act, because you receive a cash settlement rather than coins. You pay 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax on gains, plus solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable. The one-year period after which gains on coins held become tax-free does not apply to futures. Funding payments are part of the position's result.
None of the six exchanges is based in Germany, so none withholds tax for you. You enter gains and losses yourself in the Anlage KAP form and need a clean record of all trades to do so. What applies to loss offsetting and documentation is explained in our guide to crypto futures tax. This section is not tax advice.
When trading crypto futures from Germany, the order matters: licence first, then fees, and only then leverage. The six providers in the comparison differ less on leverage than on contract design, settlement currency and costs.
Futures and perpetuals are complex leveraged products. A total loss of your stake is possible, and most retail clients lose money with leveraged products.
(As of November 4, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
