Moscow Exchange to launch five crypto perpetual futures

Moscow Exchange will launch five perpetual futures contracts on Sept. 22 for qualified investors. The contracts are BTCUSDF, ETHUSDF, SOLUSDF, XRPUSDF and TRXUSDF. Each tracks a corresponding Moscow Exchange crypto index and automatically rolls over each day, allowing investors to maintain positions without manually switching to a new contract at expiration. The contracts provide exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP and Tron without requiring investors to own the underlying assets. Unlike spot crypto trading, the contracts do not deliver cryptocurrency. They are quoted against US dollar-denominated indexes, while profits and losses are settled in Russian rubles. Access is limited to qualified investors, so the products expand the exchange's derivatives market rather than opening spot crypto trading to retail investors. Investors must post collateral, with first-tier minimum margin rates of 22% for Bitcoin, 35% for Ether, 38% for Solana, 43% for XRP and 30% for Tron. XRP has the highest initial margin requirement among the five contracts. MOEX also set concentration limits for each contract. The LK1 and LK2 limits range from 961 and 4,807 contracts for XRPUSDF to 124,490 and 622,450 contracts for ETHUSDF. The figures cannot be directly compared as measures of market exposure because the contracts have different specifications and values. Brokers will determine the final trading conditions available to individual qualified clients. The launch builds on MOEX's existing crypto derivatives business, which includes dated futures tied to crypto indexes. The exchange said on Sept. 16 that more than 72,000 qualified investors had traded its digital-asset futures. Cumulative turnover in those products has exceeded 600 billion rubles. The new perpetual contracts remove the need to manually roll positions into later-dated futures. Each contract lasts one day and automatically rolls into the next trading period. MOEX set the funding parameters K1 at 0% and K2 at 0.35%. Despite their perpetual structure, the products remain cash-settled derivatives, so investors gain exposure through a regulated MOEX contract but never receive or hold the underlying cryptocurrency.