Kraken Opens Unified Wallet to Futures Traders Across the EEA

Kraken made its optional Unified Wallet available Oct. 16 to eligible clients in the European Economic Area (EEA), expanding the collateral available for futures trades and the balances exposed to a loss.

Clients must activate the feature and have futures trading enabled. Activation pools eligible balances immediately, without requiring clients to close current positions first. Cross margin, which combines collateral across positions, is the default. Gains on one position can offset losses on another, but a losing futures position can also reach eligible spot, margin and Earn balances in the wallet.

The change affects where collateral sits. With separate wallets, clients transferred funds to a derivatives wallet before using them for futures, while spot assets left in Main were outside the reach of futures losses. Unified Wallet removes that transfer and makes more account holdings available to support positions. That increases usable collateral while widening the funds a losing position can affect.

Clients can instead choose isolated margin for a linear Multi-M futures position. It limits that position’s potential trading loss to the margin assigned to it. In simple terms, cross margin shares eligible collateral across positions; isolated margin limits the funds allocated to the chosen position. Cross margin remains the wallet’s default.

More than 40 cryptocurrencies, along with U.S. dollars, euros and gold (XAU), can serve as collateral. Each asset’s contribution to available margin is adjusted by a collateral ratio, and those ratios can change. A ratio change can alter the margin available even if the amount of each asset held stays the same.

To return to separate wallets, clients must first close every derivatives position and active order. For new EEA futures clients, access requires a verified account, an eligible location, a completed knowledge-and-experience questionnaire and a tax identification number.