eToro used to let you copy traders — now it wants you trading onchain perps

eToro made its name on the gentlest idea in retail investing: don't know what you're doing, so copy someone who does. Buy a slice of a share, mirror a more experienced trader, learn without betting the house. Two weeks ago it led a $12.5 million funding round for Extended — an onchain exchange for perpetual futures — and said it plans to wire those perps directly into its wallet. That is about as far from training wheels as trading gets, and the distance between the two is the story.

From copy-trading to onchain leverage

Extended, according to CoinDesk, is a Starknet-based venue for onchain perpetual futures, founded by former Revolut staff; the round eToro led also drew in Jump Crypto and investment firm Alber Blanc. The plan, per Crypto Briefing, is to plug Extended's perps engine straight into Zengo — the self-custody wallet eToro bought for a reported ~$70 million back in April — giving users access to perpetual futures across more than 100 markets while holding their own assets.

Stack up what each of those words asks of a user. Perpetual futures are leveraged derivatives with no expiry: you post a fraction of the position's value and control the whole thing, so gains and losses are both amplified, and a move against you can trigger liquidation in minutes rather than months. Self-custody means you hold the keys — there's no broker to phone, no password reset, no one to reverse a bad transaction. Put together, "onchain perps in a self-custody wallet" is roughly the highest-skill, highest-consequence corner of crypto, and it's being pointed at an audience eToro spent years recruiting on the promise of simplicity.

Why a beginner-friendly broker is doing this

Because everyone is. Brokers and crypto exchanges spent 2026 racing into DeFi and derivatives, each trying not to be the one left selling plain stock trades while rivals offer leverage, perps and tokenized everything. eToro leading a round rather than just adding a feature is a statement that it intends to be early, not a follower. That's a defensible business call — the risk isn't that eToro is being reckless with its own money, it's what happens when a platform whose whole funnel is beginners opens a door marked "100 leveraged onchain markets, keys in your pocket."

The honest framing isn't "eToro bad." It's that the same app can hold two very different users: the one copying a cautious dividend portfolio, and the one one tap away from a liquidatable perp position they custody themselves. The move only becomes a problem if the second door is presented as casually as the first.

What there is to do about it right now

Almost nothing — and that's worth saying plainly. eToro has not published a launch date, a supported-market list, a fee schedule, or which countries will actually get this. So there is no product to sign up for and no decision to make today. What there is, is a direction: the friendly copy-trading app is building a road toward self-custodied onchain leverage, and it's better to understand that road before it opens than to meet it as a new button in your app one morning.

If perpetual futures and self-custody are already your world, watching which broker builds the smoothest onchain route into them is genuinely useful. If they're not — if eToro is where you go precisely because it felt safe and simple — the useful thing is just to know this is coming, and that "available in your app" will never be the same as "appropriate for you." That call is yours, not ours. This is a product observation, not a suggestion to trade anything; eToro isn't a broker we're licensed to recommend, and leveraged crypto derivatives carry a high risk of rapid, total loss. Read the primary coverage linked below before drawing any conclusions.