SEC clears Cboe binary options on Coinbase, Robinhood KPIs

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has approved binary options tied to key performance indicators (KPIs) of 23 US-listed companies, including trading volume at Coinbase, customer numbers and revenue at Robinhood and bitcoin production at miner MARA Holdings, CoinDesk reported in its Friday Daybook. The approval drew little attention during a week dominated by inflation data.

What was approved

• SEC Chair Paul Atkins approved a rule change filed by Cboe Global Markets, according to a statement dated October 13.
• The contracts are cash-settled and European-style, so they can only be exercised at expiry.
• They settle on figures reported in companies' SEC filings, not on numbers from earnings presentations.

When trading could start

Cboe plans to list the contracts this month, and Robinhood is expected to be the first brokerage to offer them to retail investors. Trading cannot begin, however, until Cboe Clear U.S., the clearing house, receives provisional registration, and a separate application is still pending.

Why crypto watchers care

Eleanor Terrett, host of Crypto America, wrote on X that the approval creates a new way to trade the performance of crypto-linked companies rather than betting on bitcoin's price directly. She noted that the SEC cleared this particular securities-options structure while leaving room for differently built contracts to sit under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Atkins stressed that the decision does not affect similar event contracts overseen by the CFTC, such as those on prediction-market platform Kalshi. He said turf fights between agencies had held back innovation for decades and called the approval a sign of "a new spirit of harmony, innovation, and investor choice."

The move fits a broader trend of new listed products around crypto, from Hyperliquid-based options on the S&P 500 to Perpetuals.com's bid to trade tokenized stocks. Options carry a high risk of total loss; if you simply want exposure to bitcoin, compare the routes in bitcoin ETF vs buying bitcoin.