Coinbase is moving to expand its derivatives offerings, filing with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to introduce futures contracts for Ripple’s XRP token.
The move positions the exchange to offer a regulated avenue for traders seeking exposure to one of the crypto market’s most liquid assets.
In an April 3 announcement, Coinbase Institutional revealed that Coinbase Derivatives had submitted a filing to self-certify XRP futures. The firm expressed enthusiasm over the development, highlighting the capital-efficient benefits of the proposed contracts. If approved, trading is expected to go live on April 21.
According to the certification filing, the XRP futures contract—trading under the ticker symbol XRL—will be a monthly cash-settled and margined contract. Each contract will represent 10,000 XRP and will be settled in U.S. dollars. At the current market rate of $2 per token, each contract is valued at approximately $20,000.
Traders will have the option to engage in contracts for the current month and the following two months. Additionally, Coinbase has implemented a risk management measure to pause trading if spot XRP prices fluctuate more than 10% within an hour.
“The exchange has spoken with FCMs (Futures Commission Merchants) and market participants who support the decision to launch an XRP contract,”
the company stated.
Coinbase is not the first exchange to introduce XRP futures in the U.S. In March, Chicago-based Bitnomial launched the first-ever CFTC-regulated XRP futures contract in the country. This comes after Bitnomial filed a lawsuit in October 2024 against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), its chair Gary Gensler, and four commissioners, challenging the SEC’s jurisdiction over its XRP Futures product.
Globally, XRP futures trading is already active on major centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and BitMEX. As of April 4, funding rates for XRP futures remained negative across leading derivatives platforms, according to data from CoinGlass.
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