On Monday, Binance announced on its website that users will be able to vote for their favorite futures testnet, with the winning version to become the official platform.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched not one, but two test platforms for its planned crypto futures products.
Dubbed Futures A and Futures B, the new testnets are now open for users to play with using dummy assets, with new competitions to encourage traders to get involved.
As for the competitions, Binance said it will award prizes totaling 10,000 Binance coin (BNB) – worth around $215,700 at press time – for each platform. Users who vote for the winning testnet will also be given a trading fee discount on Binance for a month.
In early July, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao revealed that crypto futures were on the way, showcasing a trading interface with features including longs and shorts on crypto assets.
The exchange also launched crypto loans on Aug. 28 in a bid to attract user deposits.
Initially, users will be able to lend their U.S. dollar-pegged USDT, ethereum classic (ETC) and Binance’s BNB cryptocurrency in order to earn interest, payable from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11. Annualized interest rate for the initial lending products with a 14-day fixed maturity term, has been set at 15 percent, 10 percent and seven percent, for BNB, USDT, and ETC, respectively.
Binance Invests Undisclosed Sum in Crypto Derivatives Platform FTX
Crypto exchange colossus Binance has invested an undisclosed amount of money in derivatives platform FTX as part of a strategic partnership between the two firms.As part of the deal announced Thursday, Binance has purchased equity in the derivatives firm and purchased long positions in the FTX Token, FTT, the platform’s native coin.
“The investment will help accelerate the growth of FTX with support and strategic advisory from Binance while FTX maintains its independent operations”, FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said.
In return, FTX will help develop Binance’s products, particularly its flagship exchange, Binance.com, and over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk. FTX also announced its intention to build out a suite of products complementary to tokenized ecosystems, a project Malta-based Binance will assist.
Founded in the spring of 2019, FTX was an incubation project for Alameda Research, a digital asset research firm. FTX offers OTC, futures, indexes and spot trading and operates out of the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda. The exchange processes nearly a half-billion dollars of trade volume per day, according to a release from Binance.
“The FTX team has built an innovative crypto trading platform with stunning growth”, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said in a statement. “We see quite a bit of ourselves in the FTX team and believe in their potential in becoming a major player in the crypto derivatives markets.”
The investment follows Binance’s September acquisition of JEX, a Seychelles-based spot and derivatives platform. The acquisition helped the exchange add options and futures to its trading platform.
Binance Invests in Open-Data Framework Provider Numbers Seeking Product Boost
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has made an undisclosed investment in open-data framework provider Numbers.Announced in a blog post on Wednesday, Gin Chao, strategy officer at Malta-based Binance, said Numbers’ protocol will bring developers «easy access» to the exchange’s own blockchain – Binance Chain – and could be used features like hardware wallet security, digital signatures and more.
Numbers has developed a protocol that it says makes data «open, transparent and traceable,» with use cases in digital identities or supply chain traceability. It’s also built an open-source mobile app that «fingerprints» data with information such as location, time and more, meaning the data is verifiable and can, for example, be used by content creators for monetization.
The Taiwanese firm is said to have been working with the Shoah Foundation, Stanford University and IBM on data traceability. It’s also worked on verification systems for HTC’s EXODUS blockchain phone.
Numbers’ product «is integrated with Binance Chain through Zion, a hardware-based key management system,» Chao said. The HTC phone comes equipped with a similar feature called Zion Vault. HTC has previously said it would support Binance’s blockchain with a special edition version of the cellphone.
Numbers co-CEO Bofu Chen said the cash injection from Binance would be used to explore more use cases for its products and speed up technological and business development.
«We are also working to open the libraries we built for the developer community in 2020 so that more developers can leverage our work and use the Binance Chain with more ease”, Chen said.
