Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has added futures contracts trading for Ethereum Classic (ETC). The industry-wide gains this week make determining the announcement’s impact on ETC prices all but impossible.

According to a blog post by Binance, the new derivative will go online on January 16 at 8:00 am (UTC). Like other recently-launched futures products on Binance, users will be able to trade with up to 75x leverage.

The Ethereum Classic futures contracts will join a host of other derivatives for different underlying cryptocurrencies at Binance. The exchange now offers futures contracts for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), XRP, EOS, Litecoin (LTC), and TRON (TRX). All are traded against Tether (USDT).

Previously, BeInCrypto reported on controversies amid the launch of Binance futures contracts. Prior to XRP futures going live, the price of XRP suddenly pumped hard and then dumped equally hard — causing some to cry insider trading.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was quick to deny the allegations. He claimed that knowledge of new contracts becomes public early anyway since they are added to the platform’s API ahead of launch. In an effort to quash any future accusations, he added that the exchange plans to list derivatives for “most of the top 20 crypto soon”.

As pointed out in a previous BeInCrypto report, the launch of subsequent futures contracts for EOS and Litecoin did not see the same aggressive pump and dump that occurred in the XRP market.

Binance announced the Ethereum Classic futures at a time that the cryptocurrency markets were enjoying their most positive performance in a long time. Since all of the larger market capitalization digital currencies experienced large gains yesterday and today, the exact cause of any sudden investor optimism for ETC is endlessly debatable.

Even though Ethereum Classic was one of the better performers over the last couple of days, other similarly-ranked cryptocurrencies gained impressively — some by even greater percentage points. Compared with ETC’s 27 percent daily gains at the time of writing, Dash soared 43 percent to put its market capitalization back over $1 billion for the first time since summer 2019.