Robinhood launches 10x leveraged crypto trading for US users

Robinhood just opened the door to something US retail traders have been largely locked out of: crypto perpetual futures with meaningful leverage. Starting September 29, select US users can trade no-expiry contracts on major cryptocurrencies with up to 10x leverage on Bitcoin and Ethereum through the company’s Derivatives platform and Bitstamp. What’s actually on the menu The launch includes eight perpetual contracts across some of the most heavily traded digital assets. Bitcoin and Ethereum get the full 10x leverage treatment, which means a trader can control $10,000 worth of BTC with just $1,000 in margin. The remaining six tokens, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano, Chainlink, and HYPE, come with a more conservative 3x leverage cap. Robinhood is sweetening the deal with a temporary trading fee of just 0.01% until the end of 2026. That’s aggressively low, even by crypto exchange standards, and clearly designed to pull volume away from competitors during the initial rollout phase. How the Bitstamp acquisition made this possible This launch doesn’t happen without one key transaction: Robinhood’s acquisition of Bitstamp, which closed in June 2025 for approximately $200 million. That deal...