Kraken has launched pre‑IPO perpetual contracts for ANTHROPIC and OPENAI that allow traders to take long or short positions with up to 5x leverage and no expiry.
Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange and derivatives operator, said in an announcement that the contracts use multi‑collateral (flex) margin, are not available to customers in the US, the EEA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, and can be held subject to margin requirements.
Pricing is provided by a purpose‑built Kraken PreMarket Synthetic index that derives reference prices from the contracts’ own market, applies exponential smoothing, and clamps the mark price to within ±0.25% of the synthetic index to limit rapid mark moves in a thin order book.
Kraken frames these as different from standard perpetuals because funding will be structurally small in the pre‑IPO phase, spreads and liquidity may be wider, and contract specifications will change upon conversion to a post‑IPO format.
The company warned the instruments are highly speculative and volatile, can cause total margin loss, may be liquidated or auto‑deleveraged, and may be delisted and settled if an IPO does not occur or reliable pricing becomes unavailable.
Payward Digital Solutions is licensed to conduct digital asset business by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, and Kraken intends to convert the pre‑IPO perpetuals to tokenized‑equity‑style contracts if Anthropic or OpenAI complete public listings, at which point margins, funding and other specifications are expected to change.
