The exchange is tackling perpetual swap contracts.
Perpetuals are a crypto-native trading instrument that Byun says are “arguably the fastest growing segment of cryptocurrency trading.” They allow traders to bet on the future values of cryptocurrencies in relation to another and the instruments have no expiration dates, unlike fixed maturity futures. Traders can bet on how the price of Bitcoin can increase relative to USD, but they can also make bets relative to other altcoins like Monero, DogeCoin, Zcash, Ripple and Binance Coin. Here’s what’s on the Blade menu at the moment.
BLADE is the only cryptocurrency exchange dedicated to perpetuals. We enable leveraged (up to 150X) speculation and hedging on a large selection of cryptocurrency pairs. BLADE does not accept fiat currency; margin, profit-and-loss and settlement are in cryptocurrency - currently Tether and Bitcoin.
BLADE offers separate order books for the following perpetuals with more to follow:
Bitcoin to US Dollars (BTC/USD) - Inverse Perpetuals Bitcoin to Korean Won (BTC/KRW) - Inverse Perpetuals Ripple to USD Tether (XRP/USDT) - Vanilla Perpetuals Binance Coin to USD Tether (BNB/USDT) - Vanilla Perpetuals Zcash to USD Tether (ZEC/USDT) - Vanilla Perpetuals Monero to Bitcoin (XMR/BTC) - Vanilla Perpetuals Dogecoin to USD Tether (DOGE/USDT) - Vanilla Perpetuals
"On BitMEX, the XRP derivative is in the form of a Futures Contract and allows traders to speculate on the future value of the Ripple / Bitcoin (XRP/XBT) exchange rate."