Deribit, a bitcoin futures and options exchange platform, has removed all trading fees for the rest of 2016 as part of a promotion to drive more customers to the service.
Disclaimer: This article is sponsored by Bitcoin PR Buzz.
Deribit CMO Marius Jansen offered a simple explanation of the reasoning behind the company’s decision to remove trading fees for the remainder of 2016.
“We want to introduce our platform to anyone interested in Bitcoin futures and options trading,” he said. “So we decided to offer free trading until the end of the year.”
According to the exchange, traders stand to make more profit on the platform now that fees have been removed, which they think will incentivize people to use their service.
Calling itself the “only full-featured Bitcoin futures and options platform,” the company provided press with a list of “key features” traders can find on the exchange:
- Trading plain vanilla European style cash-settled options on the Deribit BTC index with margin.
- Trading BTC futures that settle on the Deribit BTC index, with up to 20x leverage.
- Allowance for placing volatility orders, where the Deribit price engine continuously updates the price of the order as to keep the implied volatility of the order fixed. With this feature, basic market making is already possible for any trader opening an account on the platform.
- Real-time risk management with incremental auto-liquidation: If an account has a maintenance margin higher than its equity, the Deribit risk engine will liquidate its position in small steps, providing maximal protection for all parties involved. Liquidations are small and instantaneous, again ensuring fairness for everyone.
- A 100BTC insurance fund to cover bankruptcies. Any bankruptcy is published in real time on the platform. Deribit aims to completely avoid socialized losses. The platform’s risk management system is built such way that it is extremely difficult to go bankrupt even if one tries to do so.
- Trading via REST, Websockets API or FIX bridge. High-performance API that can handle even hundreds of requests per second from a single account.
Deribit Faces Competition
Bitcoin-based futures trading is a novel service, with Deribit being one of the first platforms to provide such vehicles. However, Crix, another bitcoin exchange that provides futures trading, stands as competition to Deribit.
Crix uses math-based analysis to manage portfolio risk, claiming that it gives traders a better chance at larger profits. “Real mathematics stands behind many aspects of trading today,” Crix founder Dmitry Koval told Bitcoinist in July. “This includes the volatility modeling and the Value at Risk method we use at our platform.”
Competition aside, Deribit said it provides trading services that cannot be found elsewhere, and is confident its zero-fee promotion will get more people to try out the platform
What do you think about bitcoin futures platforms? Have you ever traded bitcoin futures? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Deribit.