We may be in crypto’s longest bear market, but there are still plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Public sentiment has diminished when it comes to all things Bitcoin, but that doesn’t stop the industry from building. The Lightning Network is expanding capacity, blockchain projects are coming to fruition, and Digitex Futures just reached one million sign-ups for its public launch.

Digitex Futures – A quick recap

You may have heard of Digitex Futures by now, and if you haven’t, you’re about to start seeing a lot more of them. The first commission-free futures exchange to come to market in Q2 2019, this is one team with many ambitious plans.

Not only will the exchange be taking away fees on all futures trades, but it will also be offering traditional futures markets as well. So, retail traders can sign up with Digitex and trade stocks, bonds, gold, oil, forex, and tech stocks like Google completely commission-free.

This makes the potential reach of Digitex absolutely massive since the futures industry is valued in the trillions. Moreover, the exchange will attract another new type of trader when it launches cryptocurrency spot trading later on in the year, also commission-free.

But how does Digitex provide all this without taking commissions? Through a token issuance revenue model that aligns the exchange’s interests with those of its traders. Rather than taking cuts of their trades, Digitex makes money on the appreciation of its native DGTX token.

So for the first time in the industry, both traders and the exchange want the same thing: DGTX price to go up.

That’s not all, either. Digitex is currently incorporating Plasma technology into its stack to be able to offer customers decentralised account balances. As a non-custodial exchange, traders will never have to trust Digitex with their funds.

This means that the exchange will never become another sad statistic like Cryptopia or Mt Gox, nor will its owners have to worry about losing their cold storage wallets like QuadrigaCX.

A beta launch false start

Founded and helmed by CEO Adam Todd, one of crypto’s most colourful characters with a mouth like a sailor, Digitex is making a lot of noise. They consistently have the largest and most active group on Telegram in the crypto space and a strong, loyal community.

However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the company whose ICO sold out in 17 minutes. Coin Rivet reported last month that Digitex had begun onboarding for its closed beta version.

However, after analysing the complexity of the beta and not wishing to divert key resources away from the public launch, the exchange took an executive decision to stall onboarding for a couple of months. This went down like a led balloon in the Digitex community.

The company was accused of just about everything from overpromising to being a total scam, and the sharp 25% drop in token price reflected the community’s anger.

In reality, software projects (especially of such a complicated nature) are regularly and routinely delayed. What hit Digitex so hard was how vocal they had been about the beta launch, perhaps a slight oversight on the part of its marketing department.

What the company needs right now is to deliver what it promised and exceed the high expectations of its trading community.

One million sign-ups highlights massive demand

That being said, with one million people waiting for the company to bring their product to market, demand cannot be underestimated. The community might be restless, but they’ve demonstrated time and again how much they want to see Digitex succeed.

As Todd explains, even taking the most modest calculations into mind, Digitex is set to be a busy and liquid exchange. If just 5% of the million people they have registered open accounts, that will still be 50,000 people trading. A respectable and busy exchange.

Moreover, despite the recent hiccup, DGTX has proven its worth as an exchange and investment token. In October, it went on a mini bull run and traded over $0.14 despite the wider bearish conditions. While this momentum didn’t continue, even at its undervalued trading price today of around $0.035, DGTX has still made its ICO investors a 350% profit today.

The takeaway

If Digitex can really put its money where its mouth is and deliver commission-free trading and non-custodial accounts, it could be set to be crypto’s next big thing. But like so many projects in this space, only time will tell.