Kraken opens BTC and ETH options to eligible EEA clients

Kraken opened BTC and ETH options to eligible clients in the European Economic Area on October 26, bringing the contracts to Kraken Pro on web and mobile through existing Derivatives accounts. The exchange published the details in its primary product announcement.

The contracts are European-style, cash-settled and linear in USD. Portfolio margin is on by default, and options and futures draw from the same collateral pool, with more than 30 currencies accepted, according to Kraken. That setup puts options inside the account structure derivatives users already have rather than requiring them to open something separate.

Execution starts with request for quote trading. Each trade can contain up to five legs. Kraken’s product announcement lists weekly, monthly, quarterly and semi-annual expiries for BTC options under XBT/USD and ETH options under ETH/USD.

Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited (PEDSL-CY), authorized and regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under licence number 342/17, provides the investment services. “Europe is a core focus for us, and our MiFID license is a big part of why options are launching here. It lets us offer options to EEA clients on a regulated venue,” Kraken wrote in the announcement.

CryptoTimes.io reported in July that Kraken built the options stack in-house, covering the exchange, risk-management system and user front-end. That report also said the first phase would use RFQ pricing, with a move toward a public order book planned as activity scales. Theodorou framed the shared, capital-efficient structure as a differentiator and said demand from market makers was strong, with more deals in the pipeline, according to CryptoTimes.io.

October 26 sits 102 days after Kraken’s July 16 statement that it had begun offering European-style, cash-settled Bitcoin and Ether options to eligible professional and institutional clients. The latest document defines the current live access path: Kraken Pro, existing Derivatives accounts, RFQ execution, portfolio margin by default.

There are still gaps in the public record. The fact sheet doesn’t specify which EEA jurisdictions are eligible, and neither the product announcement nor other public filings give a date for the order book or broader asset coverage.

Kraken’s Director of Derivatives, Alexia Theodorou, has said the company has no definitive options plans for the United States and is concentrating on perpetual futures there. In the desk’s view, that leaves the EEA as Kraken’s documented options market and positions its MiFID authorization as a tool for competing for regulated crypto-derivatives flow.

The market Kraken is entering is large: a Cboe Global Markets report, as cited by CryptoTimes.io, puts 2025 annual notional derivatives volume at roughly $111.5 trillion across crypto-native centralized exchanges, decentralized venues and traditional-finance platforms.

Deribit was the leading crypto-native venue for non-ETF options volume. Coinbase acquired it in August 2025, according to CryptoTimes.io. Kraken’s EEA launch brings another MiFID-authorized venue into that market.