Robinhood launches 10x leveraged crypto trading for US users

Robinhood just opened the door to something US retail traders have been largely locked out of: crypto perpetual futures with meaningful leverage. Starting September 29, select US users can trade no-expiry contracts on major cryptocurrencies with up to 10x leverage on Bitcoin and Ethereum through the company’s Derivatives platform and Bitstamp.

What’s actually on the menu

The launch includes eight perpetual contracts across some of the most heavily traded digital assets. Bitcoin and Ethereum get the full 10x leverage treatment, which means a trader can control $10,000 worth of BTC with just $1,000 in margin.

The remaining six tokens, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink, and HYPE, come with a more conservative 3x leverage cap.

Robinhood is sweetening the deal with a temporary trading fee of just 0.01% until the end of 2026. That’s aggressively low, even by crypto exchange standards, and clearly designed to pull volume away from competitors during the initial rollout phase.

How the Bitstamp acquisition made this possible

This launch doesn’t happen without one key transaction: Robinhood’s acquisition of Bitstamp, which closed in June 2025 for approximately $200 million. That deal gave Robinhood something it couldn’t easily build from scratch, a global crypto exchange infrastructure with existing regulatory relationships and institutional-grade trading systems.

By routing these products through Robinhood Derivatives, which operates as a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and NFA member, the company can offer leveraged crypto products within a compliant framework.

Robinhood had already tested the waters internationally, launching crypto perpetual futures in the EU back in April 2026. The US rollout extends that playbook to its home market, where the vast majority of its user base lives.

The competitive landscape is getting crowded

The timing aligns with other recent feature launches designed to keep active traders engaged. Robinhood has introduced AI trading agents and expanded into weekend equity trading, building out a product suite that looks increasingly like a full-service trading platform rather than the simplified stock-buying app it started as.

That said, leveraged trading is a fundamentally different beast than buying fractional shares of Tesla. The risk of liquidation is real and rapid, particularly at 10x leverage where a 10% adverse move wipes out your entire position. Robinhood’s own disclosures acknowledge the elevated risk, which is worth noting given the platform’s history of attracting newer, less experienced investors.