Coinbase Expands UK Derivatives Access With Up to 50x Leverage

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Coinbase is expanding into derivatives trading in the United Kingdom, offering futures, perpetuals and options to professional investors as access rolls out progressively over the coming months. The company confirmed the launch in a blog post from UK and Europe managing director Keith Grose, tying it to the “Everything Exchange” strategy it has been building out across the UK since late last year.

What Coinbase Is Offering

The rollout covers three contract types, each built for a different kind of position. Full mechanics below.

Onboarding for Dated Futures automatically unlocks Perpetuals access. Options remain crypto-only, distinct from the multi-asset scope of the other two products.

The License Behind It

Access is restricted to investors who meet the UK’s eligibility criteria and are classified as “professional clients,” a category the Financial Conduct Authority carved out when it banned the sale of retail-facing crypto derivatives and exchange-traded notes in January 2021.

That ban, still in force, cited unreliable valuations, market abuse and the risk of retail investors misjudging the product. Coinbase’s ability to serve the professional side of that line traces to a MiFID license the company obtained in July 2026, which it said permits offering “derivatives, including crypto, equity and commodity perpetual futures” to institutional and advanced traders.

Kraken Got Here First, in 2020

Coinbase’s post describes the launch as a milestone in building “the world’s most comprehensive, transparent, and regulated derivatives platform.” It isn’t the first regulated derivatives platform for UK professional investors.

Kraken’s derivatives arm, Crypto Facilities, secured an FCA multilateral trading facility license in July 2020, six years before Coinbase’s rollout, letting institutional clients trade leveraged crypto derivatives that would otherwise have been off-limits on unlicensed exchanges. At the time, the company described itself as the only licensed venue offering leveraged crypto exposure in the European Union.

The Rulebook Coinbase Is Building On Is Under Review

Under the FCA’s current test, an investor qualifies as an elective professional client by meeting two of three conditions: a financial-instrument portfolio above 500,000 euros, at least 10 significant transactions per quarter, or relevant professional experience in financial services.

The FCA proposed scrapping that quantitative test entirely in a December 2025 consultation, offering two replacements instead: a straightforward 10 million pound net-worth threshold, or a qualitative assessment with no wealth requirement at all, weighing financial resilience, account history and relevant knowledge. That consultation closed on February 2, 2026. If the FCA moves toward the qualitative track, the population of people eligible for Coinbase’s new products could look different by the time the “coming months” rollout is finished than it does on day one.

Part of a Wider UK Buildout

The derivatives launch follows Coinbase opening 24/5 US stock trading to UK retail users days earlier, also under the July MiFID license, and comes weeks after Coinbase reported second-quarter results showing revenue of 1.22 billion dollars, short of the 1.29 billion dollar consensus estimate, as industrywide crypto spot volumes fell more than 20 percent.

Chief financial officer Alesia Haas attributed the shortfall to those market conditions rather than to any single product line. Coinbase has said it plans to add tokenized equities and further UK and EU products in the coming months, ahead of the UK’s broader crypto regulatory regime set to take effect in October 2027.

Coinbase has established Abu Dhabi (ADGM) as its international tokenization hub. The company’s newly acquired FSRA license allows it to bring global securities to anyone with a wallet, positioning the UAE as a key base for its onchain financial expansion.