Binance Launches Quarterly Bitcoin Futures Settled in BTC, What To Expect?

Binance Holding Limited, the company behind the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volumes, has launched its quarterly settled Bitcoin Futures contracts with a fixed expiration and settlement date. The exchange continues to add to its suite of cryptocurrency derivatives products less than a year after launching its Bitcoin perpetual trading platform. This announcement was made via a blog post on June 11, 2020.

Binance is Expanding

It is no secret that Binance has been aggressively expanding and has tentacles on almost every facet of cryptocurrency trading.

Since launching in 2017–following a success Initial Coin Offering (ICO), the exchange has moved bases in response to China’s banning of cryptocurrency trading. Binance now has its headquarters in Malta offering services covering the US and across the world.

The launch of the Quarterly Bitcoin Futures is therefore another impressive milestone as the exchange forays into the futures trading. Notably, Binance now competes with the likes of BitMex, the pioneer cryptocurrency derivatives platform, and Huobi for market shares.

According to data from Skew—an analytics platform, trading volumes from the Binance Futures platform are among the highest in the globe meaning the exchange is liquid. The settlement for Bitcoin Perpetual Futures is in USDT.

$140 Spread B/W BitMex And Binance Quarterly Bitcoin Futures

The introduction of a weekly settled Bitcoin Futures contract will largely depend on the reception of this product. As it is, there is a $140 spread between Binance’s and BitMex’s end of September 2020 settled Bitcoin Futures contracts according to a Skew observation.

$140 spread between Binance's & BitMEX's BTC Sep20 Futures ? pic.twitter.com/zafepDQ9Bc

— skew (@skewdotcom) June 11, 2020

Quarterly Bitcoin Futures 

Diverging, the Quarterly Bitcoin Futures contracts will be settled in Bitcoin (BTC) offered with up-to 125X leverage.

Contracts will be available via Binance’s Futures web trading interface but the mobile version will be availed at a later date. The contracts will always expire on the last Friday of the corresponding three-month period.

The first batch of contracts expire on September 25, 2025, and labeled as BTCUSD Quarterly 0925.

In an interview, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance who recently graduated into the Billionaire’s club, said:

“We have perpetual futures, so we wanted to go from longer-term to shorter. We have a lot of users who trade futures on other platforms with delivery futures, and they are asking us to launch delivery futures so they can trade in one place. We launch products relative to user demand.”