Robinhood to Expand Onshore Bitcoin (BTC) Perpetual Futures After 8-Contract US Launch

Kerbrat Sets Onshore Perpetuals Push

Robinhood (HOOD) plans to expand its onshore crypto perpetual futures business, senior vice president Johann Kerbrat said in a press interview in Seoul on Thursday, October 1. Speaking at a press room in the basement of the Grand Walkerhill Seoul in the city's Gwangjin district, Kerbrat, who runs digital assets and international business at the firm, said the product had until now been offered mainly through offshore markets and that the next phase is domestic growth. The platform recently launched an onshore service that lets United States customers trade eight crypto perpetual futures contracts, a rollout Kerbrat tied directly to recent regulatory easing. The move shifts attention away from the Bitcoin (BTC) price cycle and toward market structure: instruments that US traders could previously reach only through offshore venues are now being built inside a regulated domestic perimeter. Leverage on the new service is tiered, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum supporting up to 10x leverage and the remaining assets capped at 3x. Perpetual futures, a derivative structure unique to the crypto market, carry no expiry date and trade around the clock. Because the contracts settle through periodic funding payments rather than an expiry auction, positions can be held indefinitely, which is the access US active traders have historically had to find offshore. Bitcoin and Ethereum sit at the top of that eight-contract risk ladder, a ranking that mirrors how offshore venues order the majors. Kerbrat framed the US opening as the payoff of policy progress rather than a change in the product itself. “Perpetual futures have mainly been available in offshore markets up to now,” he said, adding that progress in the regulatory environment is what made a full US offering possible.

The product's offshore history explains why the US launch matters. Perpetual futures matured on venues outside the US perimeter, where continuous trading, funding-rate mechanics that tether the contract price to spot, and the absence of any settlement date made them the default instrument for leveraged crypto exposure. Funding rates, the periodic exchanges between long and short holders, replace the expiry auction that dated contracts use to pull prices back to spot. Domestic dated futures carry expiries that many active traders structure around, which is why US demand for the perpetual format persisted even while access stayed complicated. The new onshore service answers that demand with a tiered risk profile: the two majors at 10x, the long tail of the altcoin market at 3x. It also lands in a policy climate that has been moving, unevenly, toward codified rules. Our earlier coverage of the Bitwise CIO's view on the CLARITY Act, which held that Bitcoin (BTC) gained 8% even after the bill stalled, shows regulatory headlines cutting in both directions, while Stand With Crypto's Senate endorsements extend the market-rules push into the election cycle. Kerbrat placed Robinhood's attention well beyond its home market. Korea, he said, is a market with high levels of digital asset technology activity and a sophisticated retail investor base, and the company plans to review changes in Korean regulation closely over the coming months and quarters. Korean retail participation has historically skewed toward active trading, and Kerbrat's framing acknowledged that depth rather than treating the market as a curiosity. He set no conditions for entry and gave no timetable. His international unit treats each jurisdiction's rulebook as the gate: the US came first because its environment advanced, and other markets face the same test. For the wider Bitcoin market, the near-term fact is the eight-contract lineup and its leverage tiers; for readers comparing venues, our Best Crypto Exchanges guide tracks where derivative products of this kind are offered.

Korea Entry Remains Undated

In a separate development in Asia's regulated crypto corridor, SBI VC Trade and Aplus launched a business-use credit card in Japan on October 1 that converts spending points into crypto assets. The "SBI VISA Crypto Card BIZ" and its Gold tier, aimed at corporate representatives and sole proprietors, automatically exchange accumulated points, free of charge, into Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum or XRP chosen at signup. Rewards run 0.5% on the standard card, rising to 1.0% on Gold and up to 1.3% with revolving payments, with Gold carrying a 6,600 yen annual fee against 1,650 yen for the standard tier, waived above 100,000 yen in yearly spending. Contract holders can add up to four employee cards and set a corporate bank account for settlement. An entry campaign pays up to 31,500 yen in crypto on the Gold card for applications filed by November 30.

In a separate development out of Europe, Austrian platform 21bitcoin began paying 1.21% annual interest on customers' uninvested euro balances from October 1, with an option to collect the payout in Bitcoin without a conversion fee. The company, which says it is the first provider in Europe to pay savings interest directly in BTC, applies the variable rate to every euro in the account, including cash earmarked for savings plans or open limit orders, with no minimum deposit and no lock-up. The interest is funded by Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Bayern Mitte eG, a German bank that has held a stake in 21bitcoin since 2023, where customer euros sit in a segregated trust account as instant-access savings; the company says it passes the yield on in full, and the interest is subject to German withholding tax.

The load-bearing record here is the executive's own on-the-record remarks in Seoul, not a filing or an exchange notice, so the eight-contract US lineup and the 10x and 3x caps carry more weight than the expansion language around them. An onshore wrapper removes the compliance friction that pushed US order flow offshore, and a 10x ceiling on the two majors still keeps the product conservative relative to offshore norms. What stays open is Korea. Kerbrat named no launch date, and the review window he offered, months to quarters, sits undated on the calendar.