Cryptocurrencies spread bet product details
Cryptocurrency trading is only available to professional traders - Find out more about our professional account
Download all margin details for cryptocurrency spread betting here: |
| Market | Dealing hours [1] | One point means | Minimum bet | Minimum spread [2] | Guaranteed stop premium [3] | Professional margin required [4], [5] |
| Crypto 10 Index [7] | 24 hours | $1 | £0,50 | 38 | 15 | 9% |
| Bitcoin | 24 hours | $1 | £0.20 | 36 | 30 | 4.50% |
| Ether | 24 hours | $1 | £0.50 | 1.2 | 5 | 4.50% |
| Bitcoin Cash | 24 hours | $1 | £0.20 | 2 | 2 | 9% |
| Litecoin | 24 hours | $1 | £1 | 0.4 | 2 | 9% |
| Cardano | 24 hours | $.01 | £1 | 1.4 | 0.7 | 9% |
| Polkadot | 24 hours | $0.01 | £0.25 | 29.3 | 18 | 9% |
| Dogecoin | 24 hours | $0.01 | £45 | 0.17 | 0.1 | 9% |
| Chainlink | 24 hours | $0.01 | £0.30 | 20 | 12 | 9% |
| Uniswap | 24 hours | $0.01 | £0.50 | 16 | 10 | 9% |
| EOS | 24 hours | $0.01 | £1 | 4 | 2 | 9% |
| Stellar | 24 hours | $0.01 | £25 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 9% |
| Ether/bitcoin | 24 hours | $1 | £2 | 3 | 3 | 4.50% |
| Bitcoin Cash/bitcoin | 24 hours | $1 | £1 | 6 | 10 | 9% |
Notes to table
Overnight funding charges
This section covers overnight funding for crypto spread bet positions. These products are only available to professional clients.
Key facts
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How does overnight funding work?
If you keep a crypto spread bet open past 10pm (London time), we make a daily funding adjustment to your account. This applies Monday to Sunday, including weekends.
Your daily rate is made up of two components:
Component | Rate | Applies to |
Market-based component | Variable — reflects prevailing market conditions | Long and short positions |
IG admin fee | 10% per annum for Bitcoin & Ethereum; 12.5% per annum for all other cryptocurrencies | Long and short positions |
The overnight funding rate applicable to positions held open is determined by IG based on its own cost of funds, reflecting prevailing market conditions and IG's hedging activity. This rate is variable and may change.
As IG acts as principal and market maker, the funding rate is an internally-determined rate and is not derived from a specific external benchmark. Full details of the applicable funding rates can be found on the deal ticket on our platform.
What will this mean for my positions?
- Long positions: Depending on market conditions, you may pay or receive a daily funding adjustment.
- Short positions: Depending on market conditions, you may pay or receive a daily funding adjustment.
- When is it applied?
Daily at 10pm (London time), Monday to Sunday. Holiday adjustments are made in advance of Christmas and New Year to cover bank holiday settlement.
Important: funding is charged on notional value, not your deposit Funding is charged on the full notional value of your position. Even if the market price does not move, these costs reduce your equity every day and can cause you to incur a loss over time. |
How is overnight funding calculated?
Here is an example for a long bitcoin spread bet.
Example only – not current prices or rates.
Detail | Long bitcoin position |
Market | Bitcoin spread bet |
Position | Long £1 per point |
Bitcoin price | 30,000 |
Daily funding rate | 0.0110% — derived from an annualised rate of 4%, divided by 365 days |
Calculation | 30,000 × 0.0110% = £3.30 per day |
After 30 days | ~£99 |
After 90 days | ~£297 |
Assumes the same price and rate are held constant throughout. Actual costs will vary.
Who can trade cryptocurrency?
Under FCA rules, only professional traders can trade cryptocurrency with derivatives like spread bets and CFDs. Learn more about professional trading and check your eligibility on our professional account page.
Why can I sometimes not trade cryptocurrencies?
Given the high demand and price increases, we may restrict any new orders to buy or sell cryptocurrency, both online and over the telephone.
As we hedge client exposure in the underlying market, our interests are aligned with yours. However, due to the various risks and complexity involved in trading underlying cryptocurrencies, there's a limit to the total amount of physical cryptocurrency we can hold as a business. We therefore need to reflect this by limiting the exposure that each client is allowed to maintain through CFDs and spread bets. This limit is currently £250,000 notional (or equivalent) per client across all cryptocurrency holdings. Any client with a notional size above this limit is at risk of having their cryptocurrency positions reduced.
Sometimes our platform won't allow you to open a new long position on cryptocurrencies. This happens when we reach our maximum exposure in the market. You'll be able to open a position when our trading volume changes.
Please note this should not affect your ability to close any existing open positions, provided this does not increase or create net long exposure.
You can check whether or not our cryptocurrencies markets are 'unlongable' in the platform. In IG Trading, click the 'information' icon in the deal ticket, then select 'other'. In the classic platform, click on your market's dropdown and select 'get info'. Please refresh your browser for the latest updates.
IG policy on blockchain forks
We base the price of our cryptocurrency products on the underlying market, made available to us by the exchanges and market-makers with which we trade.
There is currently one accepted decentralised ledger which records all cryptocurrencies transactions – as well as an equivalent for ether – called the blockchain. When the software of different miners becomes misaligned, a split – or 'fork' – in the blockchain may occur. This results in the existence of two different blockchains.
Generally, cryptocurrency users quickly agree which version to continue to use, causing minimal disruption. The old version of the blockchain is then discontinued.
In the event that one version isn't discontinued – known as a hard fork – we will generally follow the blockchain that has the majority consensus of cryptocurrency users, and will therefore use this as the basis for our prices. We reserve the right to determine which blockchain and cryptocurrency unit have the majority consensus behind them.
If the hard fork results in a viable second cryptocurrency, we may create an equivalent position on client accounts to reflect this. However this action is at our absolute discretion, and we will have no obligation to do so. If, and when, the second cryptocurrency is tradeable on a major exchange, we will endeavour to represent that value. We’ll do this either by making the product available to close based on the valuation on that venue, or by booking a cash adjustment on client accounts. If, within a reasonable timeframe, the second currency does not become tradeable on major exchanges or is otherwise deemed not to be viable as a currency (for example, it is not mined), we may delete any positions that had previously been created at no value on client accounts. We will take steps to notify you when we have taken this action.
When a hard fork occurs, there may be substantial price volatility around the event, and we may suspend trading throughout if we do not have reliable prices from the underlying market.
We will endeavour to notify you of potential blockchain forks, however it is your responsibility to make yourself aware of the forks that could occur.
