The brokerage will bring perpetual futures to eligible U.S. customers in the coming months through its derivatives unit and Bitstamp, alongside AI trading agents and weekend stock trading planned for next year.
Robinhood is bringing crypto's most popular trading product onshore, and pricing it to compete.
At its HOOD Summit on Tuesday evening, the brokerage said eligible U.S. customers will be able to trade perpetual futures through Robinhood Derivatives and Bitstamp over the next few months. Leverage will reach up to 10 times on bitcoin and ether, and be capped at 3 times on solana, XRP, dogecoin, cardano, chainlink and HYPE. Trades will cost 1 basis point through the end of the year, and profits and losses will settle every 15 minutes, Chief Executive Vlad Tenev said.
At 1 basis point, a $100,000 position, which a customer could open with $10,000 of margin at 10 times leverage, would cost $10 to trade.
Robinhood has not given a launch date.
The rest of the slate
The company also introduced Robinhood Agents, AI tools that research and trade on a customer's behalf, with trade approval switched on by default. It plans weekend trading in stocks early next year, pending regulatory review, and contracts tied to company earnings metrics with Cboe.
The stock
After trading more than 2% higher before the opening bell, Robinhood shares were down about 3.5% at about $112 by the afternoon.
Why perpetuals matter
Perpetual futures have no expiration date and are the dominant way crypto is traded, but most of that volume has lived on offshore exchanges. A large U.S. retail broker offering them at 1 basis point puts pressure on domestic rivals like Coinbase and on offshore venues competing for the same traders. Coinbase won registration this week for its own clearinghouse, but that license covers only fully collateralized contracts, and margined products still clear through outside firms.
Two readings
One reading is that Robinhood is starting a price war it can afford. It already has the retail customers, and a near-zero fee is a way to pull perpetuals volume into its app from offshore platforms and from Coinbase.
The other reading is that 10 times leverage inside a mainstream brokerage app carries risk for customers and for the company, and that the product is not live yet. The launch timing and the terms regulators accept will decide how much of the plan reaches customers.
What to watch
A launch date and the first volume figures will show demand. Coinbase's response on fees, and whether the 1 basis point rate survives past year-end, will show whether this becomes a sustained price war.