Learn to trade futures

An order book is the of buy and sell orders for a particular asset. Market orders execute a trade immediately, where Limit orders execute at a specific price. 

Margin is the funds you have designated as available for trading. Margin is always individualised to the asset you are trading. Notional position size is the total position size (long or short). Margin x Leverage = Notional position size.

Trading with leverage will magnify your trading gains and losses. As your position gains profit, your margin will increase, and your leverage will drop. As your position makes a loss, your margin will decrease, and your leverage will increase.

Both margin and futures allow you to go short or long on cryptocurrency. Margin trading allows for up to 5x leverage. You are trading on the spot market. Futures trading allows for up to 50x leverage. You are buying or selling 'contracts', which mirror the spot price of the asset.

Take a tour of the Kraken Futures platform and learn how to get up and running trading cryptocurrency futures.

When you trade futures, there will always be an Index Price. It represents the ‘fair’ spot price of the asset. Generally speaking, the mark price is the mid-price of the contract. Learn more here.

Unlike traditional markets, when you trade on Kraken Futures, your losses cannot exceed your deposits. Learn all about initial margin, maintenance margin and liquidations here.

The funding rate isn't a fee charged by Kraken. It's a small amount paid by one side of the contract to the other, to encourage the futures contract price in line with the spot Index Price. Sometimes you will pay a funding rate and sometimes you will receive a funding rate payment.

The basis is the difference between the current spot price of Bitcoin and the futures contract price. If you are trading fixed maturity contracts, you should pay attention to the basis, since it will impact your PnL.

Volume is the notional size traded in that contract in the trailing 24 hour period. Open Interest is the total notional size of open positions at any time. Maturity is when the fixed maturity contract expires. Learn more.

Conditional orders allow you to set trigger prices and actions, and can be a valuable tool for certain strategies. We strongly recommend you practice with conditional orders on our demo site before using them in live trading.

The Reduce Only option means a trade will only ever reduce your exposure; it will not add to an existing position. The Maker Only option means your limit order will be blocked if it would cross the spread. The Leverage Limiter allows you to set the maximum leverage your position would have on entry. 

You can lock in the fiat value by shorting the value of your futures wallet by 1x.