Coinbase to Launch XRP Futures Contracts: What You Need to Know
Coinbase has made a significant announcement regarding the introduction of futures contracts for Ripple’s XRP token. The exchange has filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission in hopes of receiving approval for this new offering.
The filing, submitted by Coinbase Derivatives LLC on April 3, is a self-certification under Rule 40.2(a) and details a cash-settled monthly contract set to go live on April 21, pending regulatory clearance.
Each contract, denoted by the symbol XRL, will represent 10,000 XRP, equivalent to approximately $20,000 based on current market prices, assuming XRP remains around the $2.00 mark.
Coinbase Institutional, the exchange’s platform designed for professional and institutional traders, announced the launch of this product as a way to offer a “regulated, capital-efficient way to gain exposure” to one of the most liquid digital assets in the market.
According to the filing, Coinbase will list three monthly contracts at a time. The product will be margined and settled in USD, with trading hours scheduled from 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CT, Sunday through Friday, with a one-hour break each weekday between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. CT.
Contracts will settle against the MarketVector Coinbase XRP benchmark index, which is an hourly reference rate based on volume-weighted median prices sourced from Coinbase’s spot market.
Coinbase has stated that it has consulted with Futures Commission Merchants and other market participants who support the introduction of XRP futures on its platform.
Despite this news, the price of XRP remained relatively unchanged. This lack of market reaction could be attributed to the fact that XRP futures are not new to crypto traders, as major platforms like Binance, OKX, Bybit, and BitMEX have already offered similar contracts to global users.
In addition to this development, Coinbase Institutional recently open-sourced its multi-party computation cryptography library to enhance security in the crypto space. This tool enables the signing of transactions without revealing private keys and is now available on GitHub for developers interested in integrating MPC into their systems.
These initiatives come at a time when Coinbase is facing challenges in the broader market. The company’s stock (NASDAQ: COIN) experienced a 31% decline in Q1, its worst quarter since the FTX collapse, amid decreasing trading activity across the crypto sector. As of the latest data from Google Finance, COIN had dropped over 8% in the past week.