Blade’s funding and plans come by way of a Tech Crunch report on Aug. 12. The report notes that in particular, Blade is aiming to provide trading for cryptocurrency-based perpetual swap contracts with three new improvements.
A soon-to-launch cryptocurrency derivatives exchange has raised $4.3 million from major investors such as the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase and the investment firm SV Angel. The exchange Blade is scheduled to launch in three weeks’ time.
First, the perpetuals contracts will be drawn up using standard, simple contracts. Second, the perpetuals will use Tether’s stablecoin USDT for settlement and margins. Third, trades can be leveraged up to 150 times their price for cryptocurrency trading pairs.
As explained in the report, crypto perpetuals allow traders to bet on the price of a cryptocurrency with respect to another currency. However, unlike futures, perpetuals do not have an expiration date. As indicated in the report, Blade currently provides a listing of their cryptocurrency pairs for perpetuals. At press time, the upcoming exchange lists seven different trading pairs.
Blade CEO Jeff Byun commented on the company’s aims for their derivatives platform, saying:
“In the long term, we want to be the CME of crypto … Coinbase and Binance are building this foundational structure for crypto, but I think we are too and in a sense that derivatives are at their core about risk transfer, we want to be building the foundational layer for risk transfer in the crypto markets.”
Derivatives at Bitfinex
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the major cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex recently hinted that they might be adding 100x leverage for derivatives trading. The company’s CTO,
Paolo Ardoino, suggested the figure in a non-committal Twitter post with a simple image and accompanying emojis. Ardoino also remarked in the comments that there are no planned changes for the company’s current margin trading, and such a high-end inclusion would be available separately.
Crypto Exchange Huobi’s DeFi-Focused Blockchain Released in Public Beta
Huobi believes its upcoming blockchain will provide financial institutions with a framework for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and services.The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange announced Saturday that its proprietary network, Huobi Chain, had been successfully deployed on its testnet. Developed in collaboration with layer-1 protocol provider Nervos, Huobi says its new blockchain will allow businesses and regulators to determine the rules of the road for the emerging DeFi space.
«With Huobi Chain, we want to provide the decentralized framework that facilitates industry-wide collaboration, which is critical to the widespread adoption of DeFi,» said Ciara Sun, Huobi VP for global business.
Entities in the financial services sector, including banks, will be able to use Huobi Chain to develop DeFi applications that have anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance baked into the chain itself, the exchange said.
A Huobi spokesperson told CoinDesk the firm hasn’t yet entered talks with banks or other financial institutions, although that’s part of the plan once Huobi Chain has successfully passed the public beta phase.
The technology would allow regulators to maintain oversight of the distributed ledger through Huobi Chain’s delegated proof-of-consensus (DPOS) algorithm. A decentralized identification system (DID) allows users to create identity profiles that can be accepted and verified by regulators in multiple jurisdictions.
The exchange is eyeing use cases for its tech across areas such as tokenized asset issuance, payments, identity verification and lending.
Although Huobi Chain will support multiple cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin and ether, the exchange’s native Huobi Token will be the protocol’s sole utility token. Support for other types of digital assets will be added over time, the exchange said.
Huobi Chain’s mainnet launch is expected to take place later this year.
