Futures allow taking a leveraged long or short position in an underlying asset.
Kraken Futures provide access to trading the following futures contracts listed on the Crypto Facilities MTF:
| Bitcoin-Dollar Futures | Ether-Dollar Futures | Litecoin-Dollar Futures | Bitcoin Cash-Dollar Futures | Ripple-Dollar Futures | |
| Ticker | FI_BTCUSD* | FI_ETHUSD | FI_LTCUSD | FI_BCHUSD | FI_XRPUSD |
| Type | Inverse | Inverse | Inverse | Inverse | Inverse |
| Contract/unit Size | 1 U.S. Dollar | 1 U.S. Dollar | 1 U.S. Dollar | 1 U.S. Dollar | 1 U.S. Dollar |
| Max Leverage | Up to 50x in most contracts, see Margin Schedule | ||||
| Maturities |
Perpetual, Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannual |
Perpetual, Monthly, Quarterly , Semiannual |
Perpetual, Monthly, Quarterly | Perpetual, Monthly, Quarterly | Perpetual, Monthly, Quarterly |
Fixed maturity contract details and links to specifications can be found here.
To trade Futures, margin needs to be deposited in the relevant cryptocurrency. For example, Bitcoin must be deposited to trade Bitcoin-Dollar Futures and Ripple-Bitcoin Futures and Ether must be deposited to trade Ether-Dollar Futures.
Futures come with four maturities:
- Perpetual: Further details
- Month: expiring the last Friday of every month
- Quarter: expiring the last Friday of the month on the March quarterly cycle (March, June, September, and December)
- Semiannual: expiring the last Friday of the month on the March quarterly cycle (March, June, September, and December). Semiannual maturity is available for FI_BTCUSD and FI_ETHUSD contracts only
Once an instrument reaches maturity, it is cash settled automatically.
Positions can be exited at any time before maturity by trading out of the position.
*XBTUSD is used in logs download and Futures API