Tag: Exchange

Crypto derivatives have seen exponential growth over the past two years. BitMEX still leads the charge. However many newly founded exchanges such as FTX and now BTSE Exchange are hot on their heels attempting to absorb market share. Each exchange has its own value proposition, it’s own selling point. So what is BTSE’s selling point? Let’s find out.

BTSE was founded back in 2018 with its markets officially launching this year. It is under regulations of the Central Bank of United Arab Emirates. The team hails from a strong combination of traditional financial and software backgrounds. Coming from giants like Goldman Sachs, IBM and Cisco.

Our ethos is to tailor BTSE towards fulfilling the needs of professional traders and institutional investors by providing usability and reliability on a platform with high liquidity and fast settlement, all in a trusted environment.

Futures 2.0

BTSE’s standout feature is what they like to describe as “Futures 2.0”. On traditional crypto derivative exchanges all trading is done through Bitcoin. Whether that be posting margin or settlement (closing positions). Futures 2.0 allows users to post margin and settle their trades in either a selection of cryptocurrencies or traditional FIAT currencies. Users can post margin with multiple currencies and coins simultaneously. With the ability to easily add and remove multiple collateralized assets on the fly.

Spot Markets

Another item unique to BTSE is that they offer traditional spot markets. Users can deposit dollars from their bank account and buy Bitcoin or sell their Bitcoin for dollars. With previous derivatives exchanges this was not possible. It was Bitcoin exclusively. BTSE is also loyal to the cyberpunk philosophy surrounding cryptocurrency even though they offer FIAT deposits and withdrawals KYC is completely optional as long as you stick to cryptocurrency settlement and margin.

Liquidity

Liquidity is what makes or breaks an exchange. A new exchanges primary motive should be generating liquidity. An exchange which can not generate liquidity will not attract users to trade there. BTSE tackles this problem in a number of ways. The most exciting of which being its shared liquidity pool. BTSE’s all-in-one order book allows all users to share the same liquidity pool via ONE order book, regardless of currencies. BTSE has also tried to on board new users with promotions such as fee rebates and deposit bonuses. At the time of writing on a non volatile Sunday market BTSE has reported 37 million dollars in transaction volume on its Bitcoin pairs. Which is very good for a brand new exchange. However, they will need to keep the ball rolling in order to keep up with the competition.

Security and Network

BTSE employs industry standard security techniques such as 2FA and cold wallet storage. From a networking standpoint their exchange is secure as well. BTSE hosts their own servers so there is no reliance on company’s like Google or Amazon to provide hosting. Which has caused problems for exchanges in the past. For example, when Amazon Web Services went down temporarily an exchange called BitMAX had huge problems when a number of their coins lost 99% of their value due to data errors. Many exchanges also have to go through temporary outages in order to update and upgrade their systems. BTSE uses something known as ‘horizontal scaling’ which prevents this.

BTSE has the “typical” 100x leverage. With 5 main trading pairs Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and Tether. All 5 having a futures and USD pairing.

Conclusion

In summary, BTSE Exchange is not revolutionizing cryptocurrency trading. However they are an improvement on whats already there. Whether these improvements can it lead to becoming one of the top exchanges is not for me to decide. But if their dedicated team can keep improving I do not see why not.

About

qTrade was founded back in April of 2018. Based out of the United States of America. Though the exchange was only founded in 2018, the team has been involved in the cryptocurrency industry for a number of years. In 2014 they created a profit switching mining pool, later expanding their technology to carry out currency arbitration and conversion for miners. Their teams base in the grassroots stage of crypto shows in qTrades overarching ideology. Their manifesto is very simple: To accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology around the world by reducing the barriers faced by innovative, new, and emerging technology. But can it live up to its promises? This is our qTrade.io Review.

What Differentiates qTrade From The Competition?

qTrade prides themselves on their support of new and emerging projects. qTrade wants to encourage the development of projects built from the ground up by. They do this by creating some of the cheapest listing fees in crypto. Binance, the largest altcoin exchange was quoted giving out a listing fee figure of 400BTC. This parasitic fee is obviously way out of the reach of smaller projects where every penny needs to be put into development. Without qTrade, coins like NYZO which we have previously overwhelmingly positively reviewed may never gain traction, even if there technology is world class. Instead being replaced by projects with deep pockets and large corporate financial backing, and as we have seen in the past with crypto, these deep pockets do not necessarily translate into quality projects.

The fee for listing on qTrade can vary from from zero to 2BTC this is obviously a lot more competitive than their larger exchange counterparts. This gives smaller projects room to breath. The listing fee is based off a number of basic and preferred criteria. The full list can be found here. But, to summarize. qTrade rewards projects which are original, have new technology, dedicated development teams, and active communities. By having more of these attributes the listing fee goes down. qTrade also frowns upon projects which have large premines or ICOs and takes these factors into account when deciding the listing fee. They also put an element of control into the users hands by allowing them to vote on which coins they want listed. The vote does not guarantee listing but rather shows the team at qTrade which coins people want listed.

Security

One of the fundamental questions one must answer when it comes to an exchange is its security. qTrade employs rigorous security techniques and technology. They build their own transactions to allow for easy off-site signing, ensure idempotency, and leverage cold wallet storage for additional safety. On the user side qTrade has the industry standard support for two factor authentication allowing users to add additional security to their account.

Fees

qTrades fee schedule is interesting for a smaller exchange. They offer a maker fee (adding liquidity to the orders) of 0% and a taker fee (taking away liquidity from the orders) of anywhere between 0.5% and 1.5% depending on the asset. A maker fee of 0% essentially means that you can trade for free if you use limit orders. While the high taker fee penalizes people who use market orders and take liquidity from the orderbook. This is overall a good strategy on behalf of qTrade to generate consistent liquidity. One of the problems facing all smaller exchanges. I would suspect qTrade will begin to move their fees towards a more common structure such as the flat 0.1% Binance employs as the exchange grows in size and liquidity.

qTrades withdraw fees are competitive when compared to their much larger competitors even while lacking the economies of scale.

Regulation

qTrade is based out of the U.S which has perhaps the most stringent regulatory framework when it comes to crypto. However, there still remains a large grey area within the U.S jurisdiction. qTrade has gone on record and stated that they are committed to complying with all current and future regulatory law. They have demonstrated their willingness to comply by refusing to list coins which could be deemed as securities under the Howey Test. However, I do feel that being subject to U.S regulation is something that will hold qTrade back. We have seen the flight of volume away from American altcoin exchanges like Poloniex and Bittrex, towards exchanges like Binance and Huobi who are regulated in much more lazes-faire jurisdictions.

Conclusion

I am optimistic about the future of qTrade and I truly wish for their future success. They are shying away from the predatory corporatism which is rife in the cryptocurrency industry in favor of a more grassroots approach. Something cryptocurrency was founded on. There are a number of issues with qTrade but they are all things that can be overcome, and if they continue on the path they are I have no doubt that they will.