If you have traded perpetual futures on an offshore exchange and then opened OKX in Europe, you will have met a product called X-Perps. It looks like a perpetual, trades like a perpetual, but is legally something else. This guide explains what it is, why it exists, what you can trade with it and what can go wrong.
What an X-Perp is
An X-Perp, short for Expiry Perp, is a cash-settled futures contract with a fixed expiry far in the future and a funding-rate mechanism that keeps its price close to the underlying market. You can go long or short with up to 10x leverage, 24 hours a day. OKX offers it through OKX Europe Markets Ltd, a MiFID-regulated firm authorised by the Malta Financial Services Authority, to residents of the European Economic Area.
In practice an X-Perp behaves like the perpetual contracts crypto traders know: no settlement date you need to think about, a funding payment exchanged between longs and shorts at regular intervals, and a margin account that can be liquidated if the market moves against you.
Why Europe got "expiry perps" instead of perpetuals
A true perpetual contract has no expiry, and under MiFID II a product like that would be treated as a contract for difference, which cannot be offered the same way to European retail traders. OKX's workaround, launched on 15 April 2026, was to give the contract a five-year expiry. The expiry is so far away that nobody holds to it; traders roll into a newer contract long before. The funding rate does the job of anchoring the price to spot, just as on a perpetual.
How the mechanics work
- Direction and leverage: buy to go long, sell to go short, with leverage you choose up to 10x. Higher leverage means a smaller move wipes out your margin.
- Margin: you can post BTC, ETH, SOL or stablecoins as collateral, as well as euros or dollars, so existing holdings become trading power.
- Funding rate: when the contract trades above the reference price, longs pay shorts, and the reverse when it trades below. It is a running cost or income on top of your position.
- Fees: trading starts at 2 bps for makers and 5 bps for takers on standard accounts and falls with monthly volume.
- Expiry: five years out. If you ever approach it, you close or roll the position.
What you can trade
- Crypto: majors such as BTC, ETH and XRP plus memecoins like DOGE and PEPE were in the launch line-up, and the list has grown since.
- Stocks and indices: since June 2026, contracts on all seven Magnificent 7 stocks and on the SPY and QQQ index trackers, tradable around the clock, outside stock market hours.
- Commodities: gold, silver and oil benchmarks.
- Pre-IPO valuations: contracts on the implied valuation of private companies, OpenAI and Anthropic at launch.
Pre-IPO X-Perps, the special case
A pre-IPO X-Perp tracks what the market thinks a private company is worth before it lists. There is no public share price to anchor to, so the price is formed entirely by the market and the premium part of the funding rate is set to zero. You get no shares, no allocation and no claim on the company. When the company lists, OKX intends to convert the contract into a regular equity-linked X-Perp. OKX runs a campaign around the Anthropic contract until 4 December; we covered the €50 voucher offer separately. OKX's own pre-IPO guide has the full contract rules.
Who can trade X-Perps
You need to be 18 or over, live in a supported EEA country, hold a verified OKX Europe account and pass an appropriateness assessment, a short questionnaire about your experience with leveraged products. OKX describes X-Perps as intended for experienced traders, and that is the right way to read it.
The risks, plainly
- Leverage multiplies losses as much as gains. At 10x, a 10% move against you is a total loss of the margin on that position, and liquidation can happen in seconds during fast markets.
- Funding payments add up. A position held for weeks on the wrong side of funding bleeds even if the price goes nowhere.
- Stock and commodity contracts trade when the underlying markets are closed, so weekend prices can gap away from where the stock reopens.
- Pre-IPO contracts have thin price discovery, can move sharply on news, and the IPO itself can be delayed or cancelled.
- Multi-asset margin means a fall in the crypto you posted as collateral can shrink your margin while your position is unchanged.
Everything here describes a leveraged derivative offered by OKX Europe Markets Ltd. It is information, not investment advice, and it is not suitable for everyone.
Details and the current market list are on OKX's X-Perps page.
Partner link: crypto.ro may earn a commission if you open an account through our link, at no cost to you. Leveraged products are high-risk and may not be suitable for all investors.
