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A New Standard for Institutional Spot Margin in Europe

OKX LearnOKX Learn
Published on 16 Dec 2025
Updated on 24 Dec 2025
2 min read
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Europe has long lacked an institutional-grade Spot Margin market. Offerings have typically been fragmented, retail-oriented, or operationally inefficient — limiting the ability of professional trading firms to deploy capital efficiently or execute strategies with confidence.

OKX has now launched Spot Margin for European clients, delivering up to 10× leverage within a unified USD spot orderbook, with margin enabled through USDC borrowing against supported spot assets.

The result is capital-efficient long and short exposure with transparent pricing, consistent execution, and a market structure designed for professional trading firms — without fully funding positions.

Closing a Structural Gap

For many trading firms, Spot Margin in Europe has meant compromised execution: limited leverage, fragmented liquidity, and inconsistent pricing across venues. This has constrained the use of margin for routine hedging, balance-sheet optimisation, and systematic strategies.

OKX Spot Margin addresses this by executing all margin trades inside the primary USD spot orderbook. Orders interact with the same price formation and matching logic as fully funded spot trades, with leverage applied at the account level via USDC borrowing, rather than through synthetic or secondary liquidity pools.

What This Delivers

Transparent Spot Execution Margin trades execute directly in the primary USD spot orderbook, using the same pricing and execution logic as spot trading.

Up to 10× Capital-Efficient Leverage Access leverage designed for professional trading firms, improving capital efficiency versus fully funded spot positions.

Strategy Flexibility Support for basis, carry, relative-value, and delta-neutral strategies where supported by available liquidity, using spot instruments.

Unified USD Collateral USD, USDC, and USDG are treated as a single collateral pool, simplifying funding and risk management across most supported assets.

Real-Time Risk Controls Transparent LTVs, automated liquidation rules, and continuous monitoring aligned with institutional workflows.

Market Structure Designed for Europe

Spot Margin is executed via an independent USD EEA orderbook, built to meet regional structuring and institutional trading requirements. The market operates with:

  • Direct access to the orderbook

  • Transparent price discovery

  • No internalisation or proprietary trading

  • Clear separation between trading infrastructure and liquidity provision

This structure supports a neutral, conflict-aware execution environment suitable for professional capital.

Available Now

USDC borrowing is available at launch, with BTC/USDC and ETH/USDC supported initially. Additional assets and pairs will roll out in phases. Contact us to learn more here.

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