Poloniex, one of the veteran cryptocurrency exchanges, will be joining the derivatives party. The venue has launched Poloniex Futures – a platform that allows traders to use BTC perpetual swaps with USDT as collateral and up to 100x leverage.
According to an official release dated July 11th, Poloniex has announced the launch of its Futures trading platform.
Following the launch, traders will be able to adequately long or short Bitcoin using a leverage factor of up to 100x. The system uses perpetual swaps, which are essentially futures contracts without a set expiration date. In other words, traders can choose to open and close their positions whenever they want to.
Per the release, existing accounts on Poloniex’s spot, margin, and lending platforms won’t have to sign up for a new account and will be able to transfer the funds “seamlessly.”
In addition to the above, Poloniex will also launch a demo platform where each user will receive demo 10,000 USDT so that they can try out the new features.
Cryptocurrency derivatives trading platforms are definitely on the rise in the past year. Many major venues, including the leading exchange, Binance, launched their own derivatives arms. Binance Futures, for instance, has quickly grown to be one of the leading Bitcoin futures exchanges.
CryptoPotato recently reported that the open interest on Binance Futures increased by 180% in June, despite the overall lower trading volume.
Open interest is calculated by summing up all the opened positions, irrespective of whether they are long or short, and subtracting those that have been closed. Hence, while the volume decreased, there are even more open positions, which suggests that traders might be expecting a surge in the volatility.
In any case, Bitcoin is up by more than 78% since the mid-March crash, but the spot volumes are also down about 28%. This means that people are currently more inclined to HODL, rather than to sell.