Collateral currency
A collateral currency is a currency that can be used for trading using margin*.
The collateral currency you hold does not have to match the trading pair of the order book on which you plan to trade using margin. This is possible because when you open a position by purchasing or selling cryptocurrency on margin (going “long” or “short”), Kraken’s own funds are used to extend margin to you for the full amount of that purchase or sale.
Unstaked assets can be used as collateral for margin trading. Kraken Rewards assets (staked automatically) are eligible as collateral, while Kraken Pro Flexible Staking and Pro Bonded Staking assets are not eligible.

The collateral currencies on Kraken are:

Currency
Symbol
Haircut
Aave
AAVE
20%
Arbitrum
ARB
10%
Avalanche
AVAX
10%
Bitcoin
BTC
1%
Bittensor
TAO
20%
Celestia
TIA
10%
Cardano
ADA
7.5%
Chainlink
LINK
10%
Cosmos
ATOM
10%
Dai
DAI
10%
Decentraland
MANA
20%
Dogecoin
DOGE
7.5%
Dogwifhat
WIF
20%
Ethereum
ETH
1%
Filecoin
FIL
20%
Injective
INJ
20%
Kaspa
KAS
20%
Kusama
KSM
20%
Litecoin
LTC
7.5%
Mina
MINA
20%
NEAR Protocol
NEAR
20%
PAX Gold
PAXG
3%
Pepe
PEPE
20%
Polkadot
DOT
7.5%
Render
RENDER
20%
Sei
SEI
10%
Shiba Inu
SHIB
20%
Solana
SOL
7.5%
Stellar
XLM
10%
Stacks
STX
20%
Sui
SUI
20%
Tether
USDT
0.5%
Tezos
XTZ
20%
The Graph
GRT
20%
THORchain
RUNE
20%
TRON
TRX
10%
USD Coin
USDC 
0.5%
XRP
XRP
5%

The collateral cash currencies on Kraken are:

Currency
Symbol
Haircut
Australian Dollar
AUD
0%
British Pound
GBP 
0%
Canadian Dollar
CAD
0%
Euro
EUR
0%
Swiss Franc
CHF
0%
US Dollar
USD
0%
For Cardano (ADA), Dai (DAI), and Polkadot (DOT) there is a 10% haircut, meaning for collateral currency purposes 1 USDT counts for 0.9 USDT towards your trade balance.
Solana (SOL) has a 7.5% haircut, meaning 1 SOL counts for 0.925 SOL towards your trade balance.Tether (USDT) has a 0.5% haircut, meaning 1 USDT counts for 0.995 USDT towards your trade balance.
For Aave (AAVE) there is a 20% haircut, meaning for collateral currency purposes 1 AAVE counts for 0.8 AAVE towards your trade balance.
For Tezos (XTZ) and TRON (TRX) there is a 30% haircut, meaning for collateral currency purposes 1 XTZ only counts for 0.7 XTZ towards your trade balance.
Note: Collateral currencies used to open a spot position on margin can not be exchanged for other currencies or withdrawn while the spot position on margin is open. This means that, although your digital assets that are reserved as collateral currencies will show in your account balance, these assets will not be available to trade or withdraw. To see the amount available to trade or withdraw in any given asset, navigate to the Funding tab through your Kraken account, then click on Withdraw next to the specific asset.

Kraken Futures

Kraken Futures supports different collateral currencies and has a distinct margining system depending on the contract. See Futures Collateral Currencies for detail.

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