Kraken announced the availability of its Unified Wallet to eligible European Economic Area users on October 16, 2026. The feature combines spot, margin, Earn, and futures balances for Kraken Pro users after manual activation, eliminating the need to transfer collateral between separate wallets.
The wallet's default cross-margin setting carries a key risk: a losing futures position can draw on the account's entire eligible balance, including crypto held for spot trading and qualifying Earn balances. Under the separate-wallet arrangement, these holdings would remain isolated from futures losses.
How Collateral Works
More than 40 cryptocurrencies, alongside USD, EUR, and gold, can serve as collateral. Collateral is credited at asset-specific ratios. The introductory documentation lists bitcoin and ether at 99% of their value and USD and EUR at 100%, though Kraken notes these parameters are subject to change.
Regional restrictions apply to EEA users. USDT and DAI carry zero collateral value through a 100% haircut, limiting their effectiveness as collateral in the region.
Activation and Requirements
Activation is manual through Kraken Pro's account settings, with eligible balances pooled immediately. Futures trading must also be enabled separately. EEA derivative requirements include account verification, a knowledge-and-experience questionnaire for new futures clients, and a tax identification number.
Inverse derivatives balances and US TradFi futures remain outside Unified Wallet.
Risk Management Options
Isolated margin remains available on linear Multi-M futures contracts for individual trades, separating the margin allocated to a position and limiting potential losses to that allocation.
Users can enable Unified Wallet without closing open positions. However, switching back to separate wallets requires closing all derivatives positions and active orders first. After switching back, users must manually transfer funds to the separate derivatives wallet before opening new positions.
