On Friday (31 August 2018), London-based cryptocurrency derivatives firm ‘Crypto Facilities’ (a competitor to BitMEX and Deribit) announced that it had launched perpetual futures contract on XBT/USD, and the world’s first perpetual ETH/USD, BCH/USD, XRP/USD, LTC/USD, and XRP/XBT futures contracts.

This is how the news was announced on Twitter:

We have just launched Perpetual Futures on XBT/USD. And world's first Perpetual BCH/USD, ETH/USD, XRP/USD, LTC/USD, and XRP/XBT contracts Use Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, XRP & BitcoinCash as collateral to trade 24/7! Sign up and trade within 60 seconds: https://t.co/Ia49JYRkzU pic.twitter.com/gbOtGcWLix — Crypto Facilities (@CryptoFLtd) August 31, 2018

A “perpetual futures contract” is a derivative product that is similar to a traditional “futures contract” but is different in two ways:

There is no expiration/settlement date.

Such futures contracts trade close to the underlying reference index price.

Before Friday’s announcement, Crypto Facilities only offered standard monthly/quarterly futures contracts on XBT/USD, ETH/USD, LTC/USD, BCH/USD, XRP/USD, and XRP/XBT.

With this move, Crypto Facilities joins rivals BitMEX and Deribit, which already offered perpetual futures on XBT/USD; BitMEX launched its perpetual XBT/USD “leveraged swap product” on 13 May 2016. Although in its Twitter announcement Crypto Facilities says that it is offering the world’s perpetual ETH/USD contract, in reality, that honor belongs to BitMEX, which launched such a product on 2 August 2018.

Please note:

Unlike with BitMEX, which only lets you deposit BTC, you can use BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP, and BCH as collateral.

The XRP/XBT perpetual product is “Vanilla Perpetual Futures” whilst the other perpetual contracts are “Inverse Perpetual Futures”.

There is a settlement process every four hours that applies funding to anchor the spot value to the Index; the auto-roll period is every four hours at 12:00 UTC, 16:00 UTC, 20:00 UTC, 00:00 UTC, 04:00 UTC, and 08:00 UTC).

For the full set of contract specifications, please see the Crypto Facilities website.

According to Crypto Facilities, the XBT/USD perpetual futures product already has the majority of the traded volume on Bitcoin-Dollar futures:

Our XBT:USD perpetual contract now making up the majority of the traded volume on Bitcoin-Dollar Futures on the platform. Learn more about Perpetual Futures Contract specs here: https://t.co/aFO4bPv5hV Join our Telegram to chat if you have any questions https://t.co/hun96rk9B8 pic.twitter.com/cECbqpeuR6 — Crypto Facilities (@CryptoFLtd) September 2, 2018

Featured Image Courtesy of Crypto Facilities