Following an incubation program under Alameda Research, the derivatives platform opened this past spring. FTX runs an over-the-counter desk, futures, indexes, and now spot trading. Based out of the Antigua and Barbuda, the platform is slowly adding spot and margin trading.
Crypto derivatives platform FTX has perhaps the most speculative and oddly-named futures index fund on the market: SHIT-PERP, or the Shitcoin Index Perpetual Futures.
An index of 58 low market cap coins, SHIT-PERP includes projects like Waves, Grin, and Nano. It is flanked by two other low-cap indexes on the site, MID-PERP and ALT-PERP.
FTX’s connection to Alameda Research gives it deep liquidity, per FTX statements. Founded in October 2017, Alameda manages over $100 million in digital assets, trading between $600 million and $1.5 billion per day. The quantitative trading firm operates the second-best performing account on BitMEX and helped onboard staff from Jane Street, Optiver, Susquehanna, Facebook, and Google to FTX, according to FTX.
Regardless of the index’s name, FTX stands by its product which it launched in June. Speaking to CoinDesk, FTX Chief Marking Officer Darren Wong said the index allows traders and investors to interact with coins in an innovative way. Wong listed three examples:
- If you want exposure to a particular initial coin offering, but not the general industry, you can short SHIT-PERP. By shorting the greater alt market, you hedge your bets and limit your downside.
- If you want to short low market cap altcoins in general, you can use SHIT-PERP. The indexed future is one of few ways to short low cap alt markets.
- If you think bitcoin’s dominance is too high, you can buy all three of FTX’s altcoin futures indexes and sell BTC-PERP, the platforms Bitcoin futures index.
Surprisingly, Wong says the exchange trades a roughly on par with its other futures index, ALT-PERP, at roughly a few million dollars turnover. At the time of writing, the index was down 2.62%.
Crypto Exchange CEX.IO Expands US Service to Cover 31 States
Cryptocurrency exchange CEX.io now operates in 31 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Since launching a U.S. office early in July, the London, U.K.-based firm says its compliance team has been working with regulators to satisfy the required checks and audits and be granted money transmitter licenses in the new states.
Following that effort, the company says it’s been granted seven new licenses, bringing its total to 15, including Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia.
Alexander Kravets, CEO of CEX.io US, said:
“Our mission is to become fully approved and regularly audited license holders, while facilitating CEX.IO’s US growth under a transparent and regulated umbrella. Within less than a month, we’ve managed to collect MTLs in seven more states, and we’re not stopping here. The goal is to cover all 50 states and roll out new products uniquely tailored to each.”
The firm further operates in 16 states that do not require exchanges to be licensed as money senders: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
CEX.io first launched exchange services in some states in the U.S. back in 2015.
In other news, CEX.io said that it has recently received a distributed ledger technology license from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC).
Discussing the licensing effort, Oleksandr Lutskevych, CEO and founder of CEX.IO, said that, “It takes lots of time and resources, but we are successfully building a solid foundation as a trustworthy platform for customers from all over the world who want to work with digital assets in a legal, transparent way.”
