The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a rule change that allows Cboe Exchange to list binary options tied to reported business metrics of 23 public companies, including crypto exchange Coinbase, Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, and trading platform Robinhood. The decision lets investors take yes-or-no positions on specific figures a company reports, rather than on its share price or on the price of Bitcoin.
What the SEC Approved
According to the SEC’s approval order, Release No. 34-106659, Cboe filed the proposal on June 30, 2026, the Federal Register published it for public comment on July 15, and Cboe submitted a revised version, known as Amendment No. 1, on October 1. The Commission granted accelerated approval to the amended proposal on October 13, 2026.
Cboe Exchange is the options market operated by Cboe Global Markets, one of the largest exchange groups in the United States. A key performance indicator (KPI) is a financial or operating metric a company discloses in its earnings-related filings with the SEC, namely Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, or Form 10-K.
The products are cash-settled, European-style options, meaning they can only be exercised on their expiration date. They will trade as national market system (NMS) securities, the category that covers listed stocks and options in the U.S.
A call option pays a fixed $1 if the reported KPI equals or exceeds a preset strike level. A put option pays $1 if the reported figure falls below that level. In all other cases, the contract expires worthless.
Settlement relies on the figure in the company’s SEC filing, not its earnings press release. Under Cboe’s rules, a later restatement of the figure does not change a payout that has already been settled.
Each contract has a multiplier of one, compared with 100 for standard equity options. Positions must be fully funded, and holdings are capped at 25,000 standard option contracts per expiration, with 100 binary KPI contracts counting as one standard contract.
Crypto Firm Metrics on the List
For Coinbase Global, the approved metrics include diluted earnings per share, total revenue, transaction revenue, total trading volume, and subscription and services revenue.
For MARA, which the order lists under its former name Marathon Digital Holdings, the metrics include Bitcoin (BTC) produced, BTC purchased, total BTC holdings, number of blocks won, and energized hashrate. Energized hashrate measures the computing power a miner has switched on, expressed in exahashes per second (EH/s).
Robinhood Markets contracts cover total net revenues, funded customers, average revenue per user (ARPU) and subscribers to Robinhood Gold, the company’s paid premium tier.
Cboe’s Day 1 product list, dated September 14, 2026, shows more than 100 metrics planned for launch. That list does not include Coinbase’s total trading volume among the initial contracts, and Cboe says it may still update the lineup before trading begins.
What SEC Chairman Paul Atkins Said
In a statement issued the same day, SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins said the contracts will follow exchange rules on margin requirements, trading halts and market-maker quoting obligations.
Atkins stressed that the order covers only these specific contracts traded on a securities exchange. He said it neither addresses nor forecloses oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator for futures and event contracts, over KPI products structured differently.
Atkins described years of jurisdictional “turf wars” between the two agencies and said the decision reflects “a new spirit of harmonization, innovation, and investor choice.”
Launch Depends on Clearing Approval
Cboe and Robinhood announced on September 30, 2026, at Robinhood’s HOOD Summit in Houston, that they expected to launch the contracts in October, subject to regulatory approval. Robinhood will be the first retail broker to offer them. Cboe said it will not charge fees on the contracts through the end of 2026, and Robinhood said it will also offer them without fees through year-end.
The same announcement said Cboe has applied for temporary SEC registration of its clearinghouse, Cboe Clear U.S. (CCUS), as a covered clearing agency so that it can clear the new options. A clearinghouse stands between buyers and sellers to guarantee that trades settle.
A Cboe trading notice states that listing remains subject to approval of the relevant filings of both the exchange and CCUS. As of October 15, no trading date has been announced.
Kalshi Pushed Back on the Proposal
The approval follows opposition from Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market. As Crypto Times reported, Kalshi urged the SEC to hold off until regulators clarified where SEC authority over securities ends, and CFTC authority over derivatives begins. The firm’s August 5 comment letter is posted on the SEC’s public docket for the proposal.
The KPI options extend Cboe’s push into outcome-based trading. In June 2026, the exchange launched Cboe Predicts, a suite of binary options on the Mini-S&P 500 Index, initially through Interactive Brokers. In August, its BZX exchange also sought approval to list 3x leveraged Bitcoin and Ether ETFs.
What Comes Next
The approval does not settle the broader question of where securities-style options end and CFTC-regulated event contracts begin. For now, it gives retail traders a regulated, defined-risk way to take positions on the operating results of crypto-linked companies without trading Bitcoin directly.
The next milestones are a decision on CCUS registration, Cboe’s final contract list and a confirmed launch date. Trading activity across the metrics will become clearer only once the contracts go live.
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