Arthur Hayes, CEO of BitMEX, revealed that the exchange would launch new Bitcoin-based fixed income products in a few weeks. He also shared his stance on the current performance of the leading cryptocurrency and why he thinks it’s a good investment.
Speaking on Bloomberg’s Daybreak Asia from the sidelines of the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taipei, Arthur Hayes, CEO of popular Bitcoin margin trading exchange BitMEX, announced exciting information regarding the platform’s future developments.
The executive explained that they’ve already managed to establish the BitMEX exchange as a leading provider of various cryptocurrency derivatives:
Our most popular product is a derivative that we created, a perpetual swap. It’s essentially a leveraged derivative that doesn’t have any expiry date. This product trades about… $5 to $10 billion US dollars per day notional. It’s the most liquid trading product for crypto. We also have other altcoin products where, say, Ethereum, EOS, TRON, all these different altcoins, we allow people to trade those on leverage as well. So, we have a full product suite of these derivatives.
With this broad array of cryptocurrency derivatives, Hayes explained that BitMEX aims to diversify and venture into fixed income products:
Something that we’re really keen on working on is fixed income. So, in the next few weeks, we will be revealing that we have the first Bitcoin Zero Coupon Bond with a few counterparties that we have identified, because we want to start a market where people can actually earn yield on their Bitcoin by investing and loaning Bitcoin to some of the most stable companies in the space.
Fixed income represents a type of investment security which pays the investor fixed interest payments until its maturity date. Perhaps one of its most popular subtypes is government and corporate bonds.
Speaking of Bitcoin’s recent volatility, Hayes said that “this is sort of a high-water mark for a lot of investors.”
He noted that trading volume has actually increased during weekends. This, according to the CEO, signals that positive sentiment is back:
I think it’s still a retail-lit phenomenon. The sentiment is back. There have been positive developments. You have the Facebook Libra, a stable coin that some people believe will bring a few billion people into this digital payments ecosystem. That’s very bullish.
He also noted that it took people two years to clean out their balance sheets and that they are now back trading cryptocurrencies.
It’s also worth noting that Bitcoin has since plunged in price, dropping below $10,000. At the time of writing, however, BTC was trading at around $10,210, marking a 7.5% decrease on the day.