Blockchain.com has added options trading to its lineup. Eligible users can now buy call or put contracts on a handful of major digital assets, with expiries capped at one week.
The product went live on October 20, 2026, and trades settle in USDC. It’s the latest step in what has been a busy year for the company’s derivatives ambitions.
What Blockchain.com is actually offering
The new feature sits inside Blockchain.com’s Trading Account. Users can buy calls if they expect a price to rise, or puts if they expect it to fall.
That fee is called the premium, and on Blockchain.com it doubles as the ceiling on losses. Whatever a trader pays to open the position is the most they can lose on it.
The catch is that users must hold contracts until settlement. There’s no bailing out early when a trade turns south, so the defined risk comes paired with a defined commitment.
At launch, seven assets are eligible:
The minimum premium per order is $5, plus fees.
Every trade is funded in USDC, the dollar-pegged stablecoin. Users don’t need to hold the underlying asset to bet on it.
Why weekly expiries matter
The one-week maximum expiry is a deliberate design choice. It keeps contracts short and focused on near-term price action rather than long-range bets.
Combined with the buy-only structure and the hold-to-settlement rule, the setup is about as straightforward as options get. Users aren’t writing contracts or taking on open-ended obligations. They pay a fixed amount and find out within a week whether it was worth it.
Background: a derivatives push in progress
Options didn’t arrive in a vacuum. Blockchain.com rolled out perpetual futures trading earlier in 2026, giving users leveraged exposure without expiry dates.
The company is also knocking on regulators’ doors. On October 13, 2026, one week before the options launch, Blockchain.com filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for two registrations.
The first is a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) license. In plain terms, that’s the designation that lets a firm handle customer orders and funds for futures and related contracts.
The second is a Designated Contract Market (DCM) registration. That’s the status that allows a firm to run a regulated exchange for derivatives itself.
The stated aim of those filings is to introduce regulated derivatives and prediction markets in the United States. The applications have been filed, not approved, so the US piece of the plan remains a work in progress.
What this means for traders and the exchange
That simplicity has trade-offs worth noting. Short-dated options can expire worthless quickly, and many do. A trader who buys a string of weekly calls and keeps missing can lose the full premium each time, even if each loss is individually small. Capped risk per trade doesn’t mean capped risk overall.
The asset list also says something about where Blockchain.com sees demand. Alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum, it includes Hyperliquid’s HYPE, a token tied to a rival derivatives venue.
For Blockchain.com itself, the sequencing is telling. Perpetuals earlier this year, CFTC filings on October 13, options on October 20.
The CFTC applications are the piece to watch. Approval for FCM and DCM status would give Blockchain.com a regulated path to offer derivatives and prediction markets to US customers. Until then, the options product is limited to users the company deems eligible.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.