Deribit

Deribit Review

What is Deribit?

Deribit is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange offering futures, perpetuals, options and spot trading. Founded in the Netherlands in 2016 by brothers John and Marius Jansen, Deribit later relocated its base to Panama. In May 2025, Coinbase announced its acquisition of Deribit in a deal valued at roughly $2.9 billion; the transaction included $700 million in cash and 11 million shares of Coinbase Class A common stock, and closed on August 14, 2025. Deribit's founders exited the company following the acquisition. The exchange is now recognized as the global leader in crypto derivatives by open interest and options volume, and its products are being progressively integrated with Coinbase's own trading infrastructure.

Ownership

This exchange has clear information on the company operating the exchange (Deribit B.V.) and they are also not afraid to show who’s in the team (pictures and biographies of the team members). This is comforting, as it makes it less likely that the exchange is used to defraud customers.

Technology Platform

Another impressive factor with Deribit is their technology platform. The entire framework of the platform has been developed to ensure that it can take care of large numbers of requests with ultra low latency (<1 ms). Very impressive, indeed.

US-investors

Deribit does not explicitly state that US-investors are prohibited from trading. Accordingly, we do believe that US-investors can trade here. Any US-investors interested in trading here should in any event form their own opinion on any issues arising from their citizenship or residency.

Deribit Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at Deribit:

Deribit Fees

Deribit Trading fees

Every trade occurs between two parties: the maker, whose order exists on the order book prior to the trade, and the taker, who places the order that matches (or “takes”) the maker’s order. We call makers “makers” because their orders make the liquidity in a market.

Every trade occurs between two parties: the maker, whose order sits on the book before the trade, and the taker, whose order matches it.

As part of its integration with Coinbase, Deribit rolled out a revised fee structure in mid-2026. Key changes include:

• Lower VIP thresholds: 30-day volume requirements were reduced across all VIP tiers, making discounted fees easier and faster to reach.
• Updated maker/taker fees across futures, perpetuals, and spot instruments.
• Spot fees temporarily waived: both maker and taker fees on spot markets are free until Deribit's spot order books are fully merged with Coinbase's.
• New VIP7 tier: an additional top tier aimed at the highest-volume traders, offering the best available rates.
• Unified liquidation fee: a standard 1% liquidation fee now applies across all products (options liquidations remain capped at a 25% premium).
• Tier downgrade freeze extended through July: traders keep their current VIP status protected during the transition.

Because exact rates now depend on VIP tier and are subject to change during the ongoing Coinbase integration, we recommend checking Deribit's official fee schedule for current numbers rather than relying on a fixed rate here.

Deribit Withdrawal fees

Another fee to consider before choosing which exchange to trade at is the withdrawal fee. The withdrawal fee is usually fixed (regardless of the amount of cryptocurrency units withdrawn), and varies from cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency. The global industry average withdrawal fee is 0.00053 BTC as per our Q3 2021 Empirical Fee Study.

Here, at Deribit, you only have to pay the network fees, meaning the fees that miners receive to confirm transactions. Only charging network fees is very competitive.

Deposit Methods

This exchange does not accept any deposits of fiat currency. It only deals with Bitcoin. This means that new cryptocurrency investors (i.e., investors without any previous holdings of cryptocurrencies) can’t trade here. In order to purchase your first cryptocurrencies, you need a so called entry-level exchange, which is an exchange accepting deposits of fiat currency. Find one by using our Exchange Finder!

Deribit Security

The exchange prodly noted (on 6 May 2019) that they have 95% of all assets in cold storage, and that it has not lost a single dime of customer funds since its inception. However, when updating this review on 10 July 2019, the platform claimed to have 99% of all assets in cold storage. This is a very good percentage and is definitely a strong benefit with this trading platform.