Bitstamp Perpetual Futures (EU)
⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Bitstamp — one of the oldest crypto exchanges, now owned by Robinhood — announced the general launch of crypto perpetual futures for institutional and retail investors on 9 April 2026. The offering "operates under the MiFID II regulatory framework", with leverage "currently limited to a maximum of 10x" — Bitstamp's own words, framing the cap as a risk-management feature.
The essentials
| Provider | Bitstamp Financial Services, brokerage company, Ltd. ("BFS"), Ljubljana, Slovenia — authorised and supervised by the Slovenian Securities Market Agency (ATVP) as a MiFID investment firm |
|---|---|
| Launch | General launch (retail + institutional) 2026-04-09 |
| Markets at launch | BTC, ETH, SOL, DOGE, XRP, SUI, ADA, AVAX, LINK, HYPE — "with other assets coming soon" |
| Max leverage | 10x ("currently limited to a maximum of 10x") |
| Platform | Web application at launch |
| Fees | Not publicly published outside the logged-in app — see below |
The entity split — worth understanding
Bitstamp serves European customers through different legal entities, and the derivatives line is deliberately separated: to trade derivatives "you must open an account with BFS", and Bitstamp's own legal text states that Bitstamp Europe S.A. (the Luxembourg CSSF-regulated payment/crypto entity most existing customers know) "is not authorized to provide derivatives trading services". So the perps counterparty is the Slovenian MiFID firm, not the Luxembourg entity — the correct regulator for complaints and the correct entity name to search on the register is ATVP / Bitstamp Financial Services (company reg. 9776745000, Ljubljana).
What Bitstamp says about the product's design
From the launch announcement: the platform operates "under the MiFID II regulatory framework... within a licensed environment"; the leverage cap "is designed to mitigate the volatility and rapid liquidation risks"; and execution runs on "institutional-grade technology... governed by a structured, transparent liquidation process". These are vendor claims from the primary announcement, quoted as such — not our test results.
What we could not verify (yet)
- The perps fee schedule. Bitstamp's public fee page doesn't cover derivatives, and the derivatives pages sit behind login/anti-bot walls. Until we have a funded account or Bitstamp publishes the schedule, this review quotes no fee numbers — check the in-app schedule before trading.
- Funding and margining mechanics (settlement currency, funding interval, margin modes) — same reason.
- Exact country availability within the EEA, and the onboarding appropriateness-test details for retail clients.
- Referral program terms — a referral link exists on Bitstamp's site, but we haven't verified its terms or whether it covers derivatives (we have no referral relationship with Bitstamp; all links here are plain links).
Verdict
Bitstamp's offering matters mostly for what it is: a long-established, now Robinhood-backed exchange putting retail perps inside a MiFID wrapper, with the smallest launch market list of the regulated wave (10 contracts vs Kraken's 300+ pairs) but a familiar brand and a clean regulatory story. If you already hold a Bitstamp account, note you'll be opening a second relationship with the Slovenian entity. Compare OKX X-Perps and Kraken before choosing, and see the regulated-vs-offshore guide for the bigger picture.
Disclosure: no live referral relationship with Bitstamp — links are plain links. See the affiliate disclosure.