One of the most renowned crypto derivatives exchange, BitMEX has just recently announced that they will soon be launching four new ‘Quanto’ futures contracts. These contracts will be for Tezos (XTC), Cardano (ADA) Chainlink (LINK), along with EOS. All of these contracts will be paired with Tether’s USDT token. According to the announcement by the exchange, this Quanto feature for all of these altcoin contracts will only be exclusively available on BitMEX. Considering the fact that it is a Bitcoin-only exchange, margins and settlements within BitMEX are denoted by way of the pioneer cryptocurrency, as opposed to USD or the underlying asset.
Most of the popularity of the Seychelles-based exchange comes from due to its perpetual swap contract. These contracts are quite similar to the traditional futures or forward contracts because they are available without an expiry date. As of now, BitMEX is only offering five cryptocurrencies with perpetual swaps and these are Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Ethereum (ETH) and also Ripple (XRP). Apart from the cryptocurrencies mentioned above, BitMEX has also added support for quarterly futures contracts and this is available for crypto like Cardano, EOS, and Tron (TRX) for now. Up until now, Bitcoin had remained as the only quote currency that was available for these altcoin quarterly futures on the crypto derivatives exchange.
The only exception that had existed on the exchange were Bitcoin itself (XBT/USD) and also Ethereum (ETH/USD). But, things seem to be changing now as the market seems to be opening up. Moreover, BitMEX is certainly not like some of the other exchanges out there that do turn a blind eye to opportunity. As per the recent developments that have been made in the crypto space, BitMEX has mentioned that almost 60% of the overall altcoin volumes were as a result of the USDT trading pairs. Therefore, the exchange has taken appropriate steps for incorporating new futures contracts that will also be denoted with the USDT token.
As far as the Q3 quarterly contracts on BitMEX are concerned, they have an expiration date of 25th, September, 2020. The new contracts that are being introduced will allow speculation on the prices of the cryptocurrencies by the end of this year. The long-term contracts are expected to be extremely attractive and appealing to the people due to the massive drop in price, coupled with the huge price volatility that has been seen in the market in the last few days. All of this will only help the space.
BitMEX is expected to provide further specifications and details about these contracts in the next couple of days. This also includes a listing by this time next week. Even though the massive amounts of volatility have undoubtedly inflicted huge damage in the futures market, it would certainly be interesting to see what these new contracts are capable of doing for the crypto space on a whole and whether they would make a difference or not. Only time will show if this move will be successful or unsuccessful.
