Earlier today (July 2), at the second annual Asia Blockchain Summit (in Taipei, Taiwan), Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) announced that his firm “will be launching a futures platform very soon.”

During his keynote speech, CZ talked about Binance’s journey from the launch of its centralized spot exchange on 14 July 2017 to the launch of a Bitcoin-backed BEP32 token (called BTCB) on its native blockchain (Binance Chain):

More importantly, toward the end of his talk, CZ presented a screenshot showing the trading interface for Binance’s upcoming futures trading platform:

As for when this platform will be launched, CZ said:

Binance will be launching a futures platform very soon. I don’t have the exact date yet. The simulation test version will be live in a few weeks.

Based on what we can see in this slide, what CZ said, and what a Binance spokesperson told Coindesk, here is what we know so far:

Initially, there will be support for only Bitcoin (BTC-USDT).

Leverage will initially be up to 20X.

Eventually, support will be offered for higher leverage as well as more pairs.

The test version of “Binance Futures” will be launched “about a week” after margin trading has been rolled out to all Binance users (this rollout is expected to be complete by around July 11).

Over on Crypto Twitter, this is what Anthony Pompliano (aka “Pomp”), Co-foun,er & Partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets, had to say:

Here we go!@binance just announced Binance Futures which will support 20x leverage for Bitcoin futures in the coming months. More sophisticated products. More liquidity. The virus is spreading 🔥 — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) July 2, 2019

Also, crypto analyst/trader Luke Martin, made the following interesting observation: