The Kraken Unified Wallet is now open to clients in the European Economic Area who trade on Kraken Pro. In a blog post dated 16 October, the exchange said the setting merges spot, margin, Earn and futures balances into one wallet, so that more than 40 cryptocurrencies, plus US dollars, euros and gold (XAU), can back futures trades. It is opt-in. Once a client turns it on, though, cross margin is the default, and that changes what is at stake when a futures position goes wrong.
Kraken says so itself. “With Unified Wallet in cross margin mode, a losing position can draw on your entire eligible balance,” the post reads. With separate wallets, which remain available, the same post notes that a futures loss cannot touch spot holdings. With the unified wallet switched on in cross margin, bitcoin bought as a long-term holding can end up covering a bad trade on an ether perpetual.
The feature is not new at Kraken, which already documents a unified wallet for clients outside Europe. What changed on 16 October is that EEA clients, served through Kraken’s Irish and Cypriot subsidiaries, can now use it. Our Kraken review covers the rest of the exchange.
What the Kraken unified wallet changes for EEA traders
Until now, a European client trading futures on Kraken Pro had to move funds from the spot wallet into a separate derivatives wallet, and only that wallet counted as margin. The unified wallet removes the transfer step: margin is calculated across the whole account, and unrealised profit on open margin and futures positions can count as margin for other trades, according to Kraken’s post.
Not every asset counts at full value. Each one is weighted by what Kraken calls a collateral value ratio, which reflects its liquidity and “can change with market conditions”. Kraken’s support article on the unified wallet, last updated on 7 October, lists 100% for USD and EUR and 99% for bitcoin and ether. Ratios for the other assets sit on a separate page that we could not retrieve. Kraken’s EEA derivatives page, updated on 8 October, says every collateral currency except the US dollar is subject to a haircut, so the euro figure is worth checking in your own account.
Some products stay outside the shared pot. The support article says Coin-M (inverse) derivatives balances are not included, and inverse futures and US TradFi futures remain in their own wallets.
To use the wallet, futures trading must already be activated on the account. CryptoSlate, which covered the launch on 19 October, reports that new futures clients also have to complete a knowledge-and-experience questionnaire and provide a tax identification number. We did not find those two requirements on the Kraken pages we read.
The switch itself takes a few taps. On the web, it sits under the profile icon, then Settings, then Trading platform. In the app, it is under More, then the client’s name, Preferences and the Wallet setting drop-down. Kraken says open positions do not need to be closed before switching on.
Cross margin, explained with an example in words
Margin is the money or coins a trader sets aside to keep a leveraged position open. Under isolated margin, each position has its own small reserve: if the trade goes badly, the loss is capped at what was put aside for it, and the position is closed once that reserve runs out. Under cross margin, every position draws on one shared reserve, which in the unified wallet is the whole eligible balance of the account.
Take a hypothetical case, given only as an illustration. A client holds bitcoin in spot that they have no intention of selling, and opens a modest leveraged long position on ether futures. Ether then falls sharply overnight. With separate wallets, the futures position would be liquidated once its own margin was used up, and the bitcoin would be untouched. With the unified wallet in cross margin, the falling ether position keeps drawing on the shared blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool, bitcoin included, for longer. The position survives deeper drops. If the fall continues, the loss is paid from a balance that also holds the bitcoin.
Kraken’s support article states the trigger for that point. In cross margin, liquidation starts when the ratio between maintenance margin and account equity reaches or exceeds 100%. In isolated margin, it starts when the mark price reaches the position’s liquidation price. Kraken says isolated margin remains available on linear Multi-M futures, and its post presents separate wallets or isolated margin as the better fit for newer traders.
How Kraken counts the collateral, in its own example
The support article works through a sample account. The prices in it are the example’s own index values (1.11 dollars per euro, $106,639.81 per bitcoin), not current market prices.
| Holding in Kraken’s example | Index price used | Collateral value ratio | Counted as margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 USD | 1.00 | 100% | $1,000.00 |
| 1,000 EUR | 1.11 | 100% | $1,110.00 |
| 0.1 BTC | 106,639.81 | 99% | about $10,557.34 |
| Total usable margin | about $12,667.34 |
Two smaller rules apply to large accounts. If net USD and whitelisted balances turn negative, Kraken charges interest on the part beyond $30,000. If they fall below minus $250,000, the support article says other collateral is converted automatically until the balance is back at minus $50,000. Kraken also says it will tell clients in advance before changing collateral ratios.
What the EEA documents do not say yet
We found no full list of EEA collateral ratios beyond the four above, and no EEA description of the order in which assets are sold during a liquidation; Kraken points to a separate liquidation article. Kraken’s Australian support site has a unified wallet FAQ with haircut tiers and a liquidation sequence, but it is written for Australian wholesale clients and should not be read as the European terms.
CryptoSlate goes further on stablecoins: it reports that Kraken’s rules give USDT and DAI zero collateral value for EEA users through a 100% haircut. We could not confirm this on a Kraken page. It would be consistent with the EU’s push to move crypto firms away from stablecoins not authorised under MiCA, which ESMA has given until January to complete.
Switching back requires closing every derivatives position
Turning the wallet on is a one-step decision; turning it off is not. Kraken’s post says clients can return to separate wallets “as long as you have no open derivatives positions or active orders”. In practice, a trader who changes their mind while holding futures has to close them first.
After the switch back, balances stay in the main wallet. Kraken’s support article says they must be moved by hand to the derivatives wallet before any new futures position is opened.
Two Kraken companies, two regulators: Ireland and Cyprus
The post lists the legal set-up behind the product. Spot trading and custody are provided by Payward Europe Solutions Limited (PESL), regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, which Kraken describes as the client’s MiCA custodian. Derivatives come from Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, regulated by CySEC under licence 342/17 and described as the client’s MiFID broker. A separate Kraken support page says the Cypriot firm was formerly I.F. Greenfields Wealth Ltd.
Kraken adds that each company works only within its own permissions and that “no joint service or cross-entity responsibility is implied.” That matters here, because the unified wallet lets coins held in custody by the Irish entity support positions opened with the Cypriot broker. Neither the post nor the support pages we read explain how collateral moves between the two companies.
The post also carries Kraken’s own warnings: derivatives are high-risk, “you could lose more than your initial investment”, and Earn and staking are not a regulated financial product. Kraken’s EEA derivatives page adds that some crypto products are unregulated and not covered by a compensation scheme. Whether Cyprus’s investor compensation fund would cover collateral posted for derivatives is not addressed in the documents we read.
For French clients, PESL appears on the AMF’s white list of crypto-asset service providers using a MiCA passport, with 25 June 2025 given as both the licence date and the start of its services in France. That entry covers crypto-asset services such as custody and exchange, not the futures, which sit with the Cypriot firm. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains how such passports work across the EU.
ESMA’s perpetual futures warning leaves a leverage question open
On 24 February 2026, ESMA reminded firms that derivatives sold as perpetual futures are “likely to fall within the scope of the existing national product intervention measures on CFDs”. If they do, retail clients get the CFD protections: leverage caps, a mandatory risk warning, the closing of positions once margin runs out, protection against negative balances and a ban on monetary and non-monetary benefits. When ESMA first imposed EU-wide CFD rules on 1 June 2018, retail leverage on crypto CFDs was capped at 2:1. The limits now sit in national measures adopted by each regulator, and we did not check the figures CySEC currently applies.
Kraken’s EEA derivatives page mentions leverage of up to 10x, depending on the margin schedule, and Cointelegraph reported in May 2025 that the futures were open to retail and institutional clients. Kraken’s pages do not say which leverage applies to retail clients, nor how the contracts are classified under ESMA’s statement. The same page says Kraken runs an Equity Protection Process meant to keep accounts from ending up with a negative balance after liquidation. We found no comment from CySEC, the Central Bank of Ireland, the AMF or Consob on the unified wallet.
Twenty months of Kraken’s build-up in the EEA
The unified wallet is the latest step in a series of EEA launches that started with the purchase of a licensed Cypriot investment firm in early 2025.
| Date | Step | Reported by |
|---|---|---|
| February 2025 | MiFID licence obtained by acquiring a CySEC-authorised firm in Cyprus | Cointelegraph |
| 20 May 2025 | Regulated perpetual and fixed-maturity crypto futures for EEA retail and institutional clients | Cointelegraph |
| 25 June 2025 | MiCA licence from the Central Bank of Ireland, passported across the EEA | Kraken, AMF register |
| 3 November 2025 | Crypto accepted as collateral for EEA derivatives | The Block |
| 4 July 2026 | Selected tokenised stocks and ETFs accepted as futures collateral, with 10% to 30% haircuts | Cointelegraph |
| 16 October 2026 | Unified Wallet opened to EEA clients on Kraken Pro | Kraken blog |
Whether the tokenised stocks and ETFs accepted since July count as collateral inside the unified wallet is not stated in the October documents.
OKX and Bybit take different routes in Europe
OKX Europe announced what it calls X-Perps on 15 April 2026, through the Maltese MiFID firm it bought in March 2025, Cointelegraph reported. They are futures with a five-year expiry rather than true perpetuals, offered with up to 10x leverage to retail and institutional traders, with euros, dollars and crypto accepted as collateral. OKX Europe chief executive Erald Ghoos told Cointelegraph that perpetuals “cannot exist” under MiFID II, hence the fixed expiry. The BlockEden blog adds that the contracts track spot prices through a funding rate inside a unified margin account; we have not seen OKX’s own documentation on those two points.
Bybit’s EU arm holds a MiCA licence from Austria’s FMA, which covers crypto-asset services, not futures. Its sister company Bybit X GmbH applied to the FMA for a MiFID II investment firm licence in September 2025, which would let it offer futures and options across the EEA. We found no confirmation that the licence has been granted. As far as public sources show, Bybit has no EEA account that pools spot and derivatives.
What to check before turning the setting on
A European client can check a few points on their own account first. This describes the terms; it is not a recommendation.
- Which Kraken entity appears in your terms for spot and for derivatives, and how you are classified (retail or professional).
- The collateral value ratio of each coin you hold, since only USD, EUR, bitcoin and ether figures are public in the article we read.
- Whether you would rather keep long-term holdings outside the pool, which today means staying on separate wallets or using isolated margin.
- That you can only switch back once every derivatives position and order is closed.
Kraken’s separate articles on collateral ratios and on the liquidation process for the unified wallet hold the remaining details. Neither was available to us at 05:15 UTC on 20 October, and no country list for the EEA rollout has been published; Kraken’s support page only says geographic restrictions may apply.