Robinhood Announced U.S. Perpetual Futures. What Leverage and Liquidation Mean for Eligible Customers

On Sept. 29, 2026, Robinhood said eligible U.S. customers will be able to trade crypto perpetual futures in its app. The contracts allow leverage, which means a customer controls a larger position than the cash they put up. That works in both directions. This article covers what Robinhood has announced, what its help pages say about access and risk, and how leverage and liquidation work in plain terms.

What Robinhood announced

Robinhood's HOOD Summit announcement says that "in the coming months," eligible U.S. customers will be able to trade perpetual futures in the Robinhood app. A perpetual future is a derivative contract that tracks an asset's price and has no expiration date. A customer can take a long position, a bet that the price rises, or a short position, a bet that it falls, without owning the asset.

Robinhood lists eight assets: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, ADA, LINK and HYPE. Maximum leverage is 10x for BTC and ETH and 3x for the other six. The contracts are offered by Robinhood Derivatives through Bitstamp. Robinhood says it will charge a fee of one basis point, or 0.01%, per trade through the end of the year. The company's disclosures say futures trading involves significant risk and is not appropriate for everyone. Reuters and CoinDesk also reported the announcement. The same event covered other products, which this article does not address.

When access might begin, and who qualifies

Robinhood has not given a start date. The announcement says "in the coming months." A Robinhood help page says perpetuals are "rolling out to eligible customers" and that customers will be notified when the feature is available to them. A Robinhood post on X says perps are "now rolling out for US traders." Together, those statements describe a phased rollout, not general availability.

The help page names three conditions:

• Trading requires an active futures account. Customers already approved for futures need no further approval. Others can enable perpetual futures trading in the app's investing settings.
• Customers in a restricted region cannot trade.
• A customer may be restricted while a position is being liquidated or when system-wide limits apply.

Robinhood has not said which regions are restricted or how quickly the rollout will reach each customer. Those details are unknown.

How the contracts work, according to Robinhood

The help page describes trading that runs around the clock, except during maintenance, with a $10 minimum order and USD as collateral. Collateral is the money a customer posts to back a position. Profit and loss is settled every 15 minutes. Funding payments, which are transfers between long and short traders meant to keep the contract price near the asset's market price, occur every eight hours. When funding is positive, longs pay shorts.

The page also lists risks in Robinhood's own words. Leverage amplifies losses. A customer could lose some or all of the collateral posted. Perpetual prices can deviate from spot prices in volatile or illiquid markets. Positions need active management, and trading may be paused in rare cases.

Leverage in plain numbers

The help page gives an example of a 2x long ETH position funded with $5,000 of collateral. That produces a $10,000 position. The following figures are a simple illustration built on that example, not Robinhood's exact thresholds.

• At 2x, a 10% drop in ETH reduces the $10,000 position's value by $1,000. That is 20% of the $5,000 posted.
• At 10x, a roughly 10% move against the position would erase the posted collateral, before fees and funding.
• At 3x, a move of roughly 33% would do the same.

Liquidation comes sooner than a total wipe-out, because the platform requires a minimum amount of collateral to keep a position open. That minimum is set by the exchange, and the exact levels depend on the contract and collateral tier, which this article did not review. The same arithmetic applies to gains. A leveraged position also magnifies profit, though the loss side can be quicker and larger relative to the money put up.

What liquidation means

Robinhood's liquidation page says a position is liquidated when total collateral falls to the minimum required. A long position is liquidated when the price falls below the liquidation price. A short position is liquidated when the price rises above it.

• Partial liquidation happens first, closing part of the position so it needs less collateral.
• Full liquidation may follow if losses continue.
• The app shows an estimated liquidation price. It updates when collateral changes and at each 15-minute settlement.
• Robinhood says customers can set stop-loss and take-profit orders, add collateral or close the position to reduce liquidation risk.

The page also lists less common events. Profitable positions can be automatically closed to cover other traders' losses that the market cannot absorb, which is called auto-deleveraging. Remaining losses may be shared among traders in the same contract, called socialized loss, subject to platform rules. All positions in a contract may be liquidated if the market becomes unstable.

How this differs from the Bitnomial XRP item

On Sept. 19, we covered a CFTC product record that lists a Bitnomial XRP/USD perpetual futures contract as certified. That item concerned one exchange's contract for a single asset. Robinhood's announcement concerns a brokerage rollout to eligible U.S. customers across eight assets, with its own account requirements and risk disclosures.

What remains unknown

• The date each eligible customer gets access.
• Which regions and customers are excluded.
• Exact collateral requirements and liquidation prices for each contract.
• Whether Robinhood will change the fee after the end-of-year period. It has stated only the fee through year-end.

Robinhood's disclosures also say that crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or SIPC protected. Anyone considering these products should read Robinhood's full disclosures and decide on their own terms whether leveraged products are suitable.

Disclosure: This article relies on Robinhood's announcement, help pages and X post, with Reuters and CoinDesk confirming the announcement. The arithmetic examples are simplified illustrations, not Robinhood's liquidation rules. This article is not financial, legal, or investment advice. AI-assisted research and writing. Cited sources, not AI alone, support the claims.