BitMEX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by daily trading volume, announced a new futures contract based on Ether (ETH) price on its trading platform.

The new derivative contract will feature a fixed Bitcoin (BTC) multiplier that won’t be affected in US dollars by the Ether price, according to company’s announcement.

BitMEX explains that this feature allows traders to have the USD exchange rate for long or short Ether without holding either ETH or dollars.

The announcement explains: “Traders post margin in XBT [Bitcoin], and earn or lose Bitcoin as the ETH/USD rate changes.”

The exchange plans to start ETHUSD futures contracts on May 5, 2020 with a maximum leverage of 50x. The firm promises that the “new product will be the only one of its kind available in the market.”

The new BitMEX derivative contract combines the Quanto feature of the perpetual swap contract between the exchange and the expiry and settlement of traditional futures contracts. The contract expires on a quarterly basis, just like the altcoin futures contract with the firm.

BitMEX Losing Ground to Competition

BitMEX is well-known to traders of old-school Bitcoin derivatives, as the platform used to be the most widely used for trading such types of contract. However, BitMEX is continuing to lose market share in derivatives trading to Binance Futures.

An analysis of the data in mid-April shows that BitMEX bleeds Bitcoins since Black Thursday. This appears to suggest that traders lost faith in the platform after it failed during the major downturn in the market, with some believing it was — indeed — purposeful market manipulation on the part of the exchange.

Cryptolydian reported earlier that, the research unit of crypto exchange BitMEX has unveiled the developers of the Bitcoin’s open-source network.

According to a recent report by BitMEX Research, both Blockstream and Lightning Labs were behind the development of Bitcoin Core software.

Meanwhile, Chaincode Labs, a Bitcoin research and development center, was the key financial supporter of the software.

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