See full Q&A here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/qa-with-coinpit-ceo-baraht-rao

Coinpit says that users do not have to even use an email or login to trade. How does this system work? How can a trader feel confident they are in a secure environment if they do not have a classic-style account with email address and a personal relationship with the exchange?

Coinpit uses Zero-Knowledge authentication using the same crypto in Bitcoin. Your user id is the bitcoin address represented by your private key. Every request is authenticated with the user’s private key instead of setting a session cookie. This is much safer than the traditional email/password and eliminates entire classes of security issues. You may have recently read about the 500 million emails leaked from yahoo. Several of these leaks occur every month. Some are detected a few years later, many are not. Hackers have years to crack the passwords, which they can easily attempt for commonly used passwords and passwords reused and stolen from other sites. Even some forms of 2FA do not protect the user from a server breach since the 2FA seeds can also be stolen and the 2FA token reconstructed. Zero knowledge systems however, do not store the essential ingredient on the servers and therefore are more resilient. We avoid email to eliminate the threat of spam, phishing and brute-force login attacks.

Coinpit marketing materials state that you do “AML without KYC” – how does this work?

Coinpit is committed to transparency using the blockchain. However, transparency without privacy would be a serious threat to financial security and peace of mind. To enable transparency without compromising privacy, Coinpit uses AML without KYC. Money laundering works in three stages: placement, layering and integration. Ensuring we do not take untraceable cash deposits prevents placement. Ensuring that coins can only be withdrawn to the origin prevents layering. The initial response from bankers to this system has been positive and provides a way to eliminate the poor cost effectiveness ratio of KYC

Coinpit currently has a BTC/USD contract which boasts offering 200x, even 500x leverage. Most bitcoin futures exchanges that offer this degree of leverage use “socialised losses” in order to offset unfilled liquidations of users whose margin doesn't cover their position. How does Coinpit offer this high leverage without socialised losses?

Socialized losses benefit the ultra-speculative traders at the expense of skilled and disciplined traders. We believe that game theory suggests that on such exchanges the most beneficial play is to make many small bets with the highest available leverage. This will lead to larger and larger socialized losses eventually making sensible trading impossible. Judicious use of high leverage requires that disciplined and skilled traders are rewarded instead of being punished. Coinpit terminates/deleverages a highly-leveraged winning trader when there are no orders at the stop of the losing trader. While this is not desirable, this is a problem that becomes less and less severe with increasing liquidity.

Many traders are frustrated by leverage products on Bitfinex and BitMEX which lead to funding charges for traders – is there any interest charged on leverage for trading on Coinpit, or any kind of funding mechanism which users need to be aware of?

Moving coins from Multisig to margin and vice-versa costs a small amount of coins to be paid directly to the bitcoin network. This may go away in the future if we can use lightening network or any similar off-chain technology once proven in the market.

The exchange does not have any funding charges at present. This makes it ideal for long time holders. Funding fees add up, but more important, being variable they complicate the ability to predictably take winning positions. The longer traders hold, the more the chances of profits being erased by funding costs. High funding rate has the effect of causing the users to trade small for short durations.

Try trading with Coinpit live (get a 10% fee discount using promo code: bitcoinfuturesguide or risk-free on their Testnet clone of their platform.

Click here to visit the whole resources of Bitcoin CFD Guide.

What CFD markets can you trade using bitcoin?

How do Bitcoin CFD brokers make money?

How do Bitcoin CFD sites work in general?

Intro to CFD Trading with Bitcoin

In 2016, bitcoin can be used for a huge number of things. What started out as a cryptoanarchist’s dream has turned into an attractive vehicle for financial professionals to access markets that are traditionally hard to enter. Anyone who has traded with a regulated fiat broker knows how painful it can be to deal with clearance of funds, settlement of realised profit, and delays with bank transfers and KYC/AML.

With Bitcoin CFD sites, you can simply deposit your bitcoin leverage it up to 200x depending which broker you use, and trade Forex pairs and other assets with the funds in under 30 minutes. What normally takes a week to get started with a traditional broker, you can can put your money (bitcoin) to work fast with CFD sites here.

Each site has its own platform which functions a bit differently than the other. Read specifically about how to trade on SimpleFX (web UIor Metatrader), 1Broker, and WhaleClubCo.

Review of SimpleFX: http://bitcoincfdguide.com/2016/06/26/simplefx-review/

Review of 1Broker: http://bitcoincfdguide.com/2016/06/26/1broker-review/

Review of WhaleClub: http://bitcoincfdguide.com/2016/06/26/whaleclub-co/

This is a growing use for bitcoin, being able to access global markets that regulators shut people out of sometimes. Bitcoin helps reduce the frictions we see in global markets and knocks down walls so even the little guy can diversify their risk.

Whale Club is a 100% bitcoin only website, which lets you put your bitcoin to work trading BTC/USD; Ethereum, S&P, FOREX, and stocks like Facebook, Apple, and Tesla.

They have a new product that they're promoting, so they're offering a tournament or competition of sorts where you can basically trade with "fake" money and if you are able to make more than others, you will win up to $15,000 worth of bitcoin. The scoreboard is all public and you can have some fun competing with friends.

There's two tournaments: Classic and Turbo. It's really easy to get started.

Here's the instructions of how you can get signed up in minutes for chance to win $15K:

Step 1 - Sign up for WhaleClub trading account (it's free and fast). Link here.



Step 2 - Go to the tournament signup link here.



Step 3 - Click the "Enter" button, it's that simple.



Now you're entered into the tournament! They also have a $5,000 binary options tournament, you can sign up for it here.

Best of luck and practice your trading while you wait - the tournament starts July 1st. See you there!

If you want a walk through of how Whale Club's platform works and how to trade the markets in general, go here:

http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/whaleclub.html

Whale Club is a 100% bitcoin only website, which lets you put your bitcoin to work trading BTC/USD; Ethereum, S&P, FOREX, and stocks like Facebook, Apple, and Tesla.

They're holding a free $15,000 competition/tournament, which starts July 1st, 2016. Sign up and enter the tournament if you are into trading the markets and think you can do some competition trading and beat others.

Here's the instructions of how you can get signed up in minutes for chance to win $15K:

Step 1 - Sign up for WhaleClub trading account (it's free and fast). Link here.



Step 2 - Go to the tournament signup link here.



Step 3 - Click the "Enter" button, it's that simple.



Now you're entered into the tournament! They also have a $5,000 binary options tournament, you can sign up for it here.

Best of luck and practice your trading while you wait - the tournament starts July 1st. See you there!

If you want a walk through of how Whale Club's platform works and how to trade the markets in general, go here:

http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/whaleclub.html

See web version here

CryptoFacilities has been doing fantastic things in the cryptocurrency derivatives space. Since the start 2016 they have gotten CME collaboration, a Ripple partnership, new high leverage products, and official FCA regulation as a true futures exchange.

They are known for providing professional bitcoin futures that do not have socialized losses, and while their volume is low compared to competitors OKCoin and BitMEX, they have been building a strong foundation for growth.

CEO Timo Schlaefer agreed to a Q&A so I use the opportunity to ask some questions about his new Turbo product, as well as bigger picture issues on the bitcoin derivatives industry in general and what CryptoFacilities will be doing in the future.

​
Interview Start

BitcoinFuturesGuide: Many of our readers are completely new to derivatives and are not convinced that they need traditional lower (3-6x leverage) bitcoin futures. What would you tell a bitcoiner -- whether they're executives at a bitcoin company holding lots of bitcoin on their balance sheet, or they're a mid-sized holdier of 10-20 bitcoin -- about why they should use normal CryptoFacilities bitcoin futures?

Timo Schlaefer:

If you just want to invest in bitcoin, i.e. buy and hold, you won’t need derivatives. They are very useful however for frequent trading as fees are typically much lower than in regular spot trading. With futures you can also go short, i.e. profit from price declines. This also allows you to get rid of bitcoin risk that you may not actually want without selling your bitcoins. For instance, a bitcoin payment processor may need to hold a certain amount of bitcoins to run the business but may not want to have exposure to bitcoin. In this scenario, shorting a bitcoin Futures will remove this risk without selling the bitcoins.

Futures also provide interesting trading and arbitrage opportunities. Typically, they trade somewhat away from the bitcoin “spot” price, and this price differential can be locked in to make a low-risk profit. There is also the opportunity to trade the differential between different Futures on the same platform or across different platforms, or between Futures and the spot price.

BFG: The bitcoin community is buzzing about your collaboration with the world's largest derivatives provider CME Group to construct reference indices to bitcoin spot market. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

TS:

It is extremely exciting that a market leader such as the CME Group is taking an interest in bitcoin and we feel privileged to be working with them. Bitcoin is a pretty new asset class, and for this asset class to develop further we need reliable reference prices. Together with CME Group we are developing a methodology to provide a once-a-day reference rate that will be published at 4 p.m. London time, as well as a real-time index representing the current market price of bitcoin which will be published approximately once per second and is suitable for marking bitcoin-risky portfolios, executing intra-day bitcoin transactions and risk management.

We aim at bringing together all the major source of bitcoin liquidity and combining them in a transparent, robust and replicable manner. The daily reference rate will additionally be overseen by a supervisory committee of leading market participants and industry experts. So we hope than everyone will have a vested interested in these reference rates and that they become a universally trusted and used source for the bitcoin price.

BFG: Your new Turbo product has a Weekly and Biweekly contract offered where there's 50x max leverage. To an existing bitcoin speculator who uses OKCoin, BitMEX, CFD sites, or even Bitfinex and Kraken on margin trading -- what would you tell them about why they should be trading your Turbo futures contracts instead?

TS:

The order book of our front week Turbo generally provides a very good level of liquidity – in most market environments you should be able to buy or sell around 25 contracts (worth 25 bitcoins) 5 BPs away from the bid price. Our transaction fees are between 1 and 5 BPs, and we do not charge any fees for maintaining a position, which makes total fees very competitive. We also do not have socialized losses, so we will not see us seizing any of your equity in case your get stopped out.

BFG: On other exchanges, people have experienced that when one marketmaker monopolizes liquidity provision, the spreads can make it difficult for people to trade profitably on short-term moves. This results in a CFD-like experience for traders, in practice. How confident can your clients be that the liquidity that we currently see in the orderbooks of CryptoFacilities futures contracts, which is quite healthy, will not disappear and leave large spreads to trap them when theres some volatility?

TS:

We currently have an average bid-spread spread of 8 to 10 BPs in the front week contracts of our Futures which we believe is very good. We have not observed the situation you describe and certainly would step in to prevent this from happening.

BFG: You and your exchange have had a certain opinion about high leverage products in the past. Can you explain how your philosophy on this has changed now with the Turbo product. And if not, do you consider Turbo "true futures" given that there is such a 2% initial margin requirement (50x)?

TS:

Crypto Facilities offers regulated trading products that satisfy professional standards. The bitcoin world runs a little different than traditional finance, and we accommodate for that to the extend we think our products are still safe to trade.

Our bitcoin Futures provides 6x leverage and has never experienced a credit event since it was launched 15 months ago. At the same time we recognize that there are market participants who seek higher leverage and are willing to tolerate a higher level of counterparty risk. For this use-case we have launched the Turbo Futures which provides 50x leverage. The Turbo does not in any way change the risk profile of your “regular” Futures trades as it sits in a completely independent margin account, so there are no cross-effects between both products. It also does not change the risk profile of Crypto Facilities as we are not a counterparty in the trades on our platform.

Also, we have spent a lot of effort on developing mechanisms to prevent price manipulation and self-perpetuating price moves on our market. Price manipulation is a major issue in bitcoin, in particular in bitcoin derivatives and it is essential to protect market participants against it.

BFG: BitMEX has recently made another strategic pivot in their product offerings by abandoning futures and collapsing them all into one "swap" product for each currency pair. Are there any plans or interest at CryptoFacilities in developing swaps or something similar that gives investors an ability to earn interest payments on their bitcoin rather than merely speculating on price and premium changes in futures?

TS:

We currently have no plans to offer this kind of product. The idea behind perpetual swaps is probably to simplify trading, but this comes at the expense of transparency and tractability. For instance, if you hold a swap for a certain time, you will not know in advance what your lending costs/profit are going to be since the interest rate changes continuously. With Futures there is no such issue as you lock in the price at the beginning of the trade, so you know what you get.

BFG: New exchanges on the scene like Coinpit and CRIX are planning to offer futures with no socialized losses. You were one of the first to offer this product to bitcoin traders in early 2015. Do you think the socialized loss model is going to disappear over time when competing with termination products emerging like Turbo?

TS:

I am not a fan of socialized loss systems at all, they tend to be intransparent and create systemic risks and conflicts of interest. I would be very surprised if a regulator ever approved a socialized loss system. We believe that our termination system, which manages credit risk bilaterally between counterparties, is safer and easier to understand.

I don’t think there will be a universal move away from socialized losses though. There is always going to be a need for more casual, unregulated speculation, and this system seems to work well enough for that in most cases.

BFG: You recently announced a partnership with Ripple, to offer derivatives solutions for traders in that market. How broad is your vision for products on CryptoFacilities? Will it remain a bitcoin-only website? Or will other cryptocurrencies be depositable? And plans for fiat integration?

TS:

We like XRP [Altcoin Ripple's currency code] and think that it has some very useful and unique characteristics. What is currently lacking is the ability to trade XRP in a more versatile way, for instance to put on a short trade to hedge your exposure, and we are working on creating this market.

We ultimately want to extend our product range to all major digital assets and permit deposits in various digital currencies and fiat.

BFG: Former CFTC chairman Bart Chilton recently openly stated that regulations need to be more lax for crypto. There are currently no legal exchanges for Americans to trade bitcoin derivatives on. Bitstamp was able to achieve EU wide recognition as a normal (nonderivatives) exchange. CryptoFacilities has recently achieved FCA permission to offer the first regulated futures on bitcoin. How promising are such efforts at acquiring similar regulatory recognition in the US and EU?

TS:

It is exciting that we are now able to offer our bitcoin futures to retail and professional investors in the UK and other European countries in a manner that is compliant with FCA regulations. This is a global first and certainly a step towards a more mature market.

The regulatory hurdles in the US for derivatives trading are high, in particular if retail investors are involved, and certainly difficult to overcome for a company with limited financial resources. Unless there is some softening of digital asset-specific regulations, I’d predict that the US market for digital asset derivatives remains effectively closed for new fintech companies.

web version: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-bitmexs-new-xbtusd-swap-product



Bitcoin derivatives exchange BitMEX has made another strategic pivot recently by announcing they were going to stop issuing new futures contracts and instead focus on new swap products which pay (and deduct) interest from users who are short (or long). Perhaps most importantly: the contract never expires, so you are never forced out of your position because of any settlement.

They started by releasing the ETHBTC swap product and have now swept their product offering of futures with this new swap product. There's a lot of confusion surrounding this new product, but it can be quite simple once you understand a few financial principles. Patiently read through this article if you would like to understand why there's a premium, and what the Bitfinex BTC and USD rates have to do with the price of futures and the behavior of the BitMEX XBTUSD swap.

What does the future value of BTCUSD represent?

In financial theory, it's quite simple how this is done. The future value of BTC/USD is merely the realisation of what a creditworthy individual can do by borrowing USD to invest in BTC. You can play with our Fair Price calculator here to see how different rates affect the theoretical equilibrium value of BTCUSD in the future.

In our post on Why Bitcoin Futures Tend to Trade at a Premium to Spot, we went briefly into the Covered Interest Parity and how this is a major indicator of the proper futures rate because it shows the arbitrage condition. Let's revisit this concept in a different light to understand the BitMEX swap product XBTUSD.

In practice there are frictions in the market. You can't fluidly go to Bitfinex and borrow BTC in order to sell it for USD, which you then use to lend out at a higher rate than you borrow BTC. This requires collateral, which defeats the purpose, and fees and other costs make this less easy too. However, in a well adjusted and efficient market, this is how the prices are governed, so try to keep an open mind and understand the theory behind it without getting too autistic about the practical details.

Just like in our infographic above, we make the same assumptions, BTC/USD = $500, USD borrow and lending rate is 0.05% per day at Bitfinex, and BTC rate is 0.01%. Let's say then that the futures price for a weekly contract settling in 7 days was the same price, $500. An arbitrageur sees this price and thinks, wait, can't I borrow BTC at 0.01% and just sell them for USD and lend out at 5x the rate at 0.05% and earn a return? He would earn each of those rates every day for 7 days, paying 0.07% in bitcoin and earning 0.35% in USD. In his mind, $500 is a bargain because he can actually really make:

1.0035/1.007 * 500 = $501.4

Just by earning the interest differential. This incentivizes him to then buy the $500 future because he can synthesize the value of bitcoin in 7 days in the financing market and sell at $501.4.

This market pressure through arbitrage leads eventually to the market price of the 7-day BTCUSD future to converge to this Covered Interest Parity price.

Covered Interest Parity makes sense, so what does this mean for swaps?

The prior section was just a refresher on how the BTC and USD financing markets affect the price of futures contracts, which themselves represent the future value of Bitcoin in USD. Now, turning back to BitMEX's swap product, which is a "Perpetual Swap", what difference is there between buying XBTUSD and holding it for 7 days, and buying a BTCUSD futures contract expiring in 7 days? In theory, there is no difference, both are just different ways to arrive at the future value of Bitcoin in USD.

With this in mind, we look at the BitMEX XBT swap contract specifications:



Remember that BitMEX is a pure-bitcoin site, so you are only depositing and trading with BTC as collateral. However, each contract on XBTUSD represents $1 in value. Just like their futures contracts, every contract has a customer as counterparty who is on the LONG and the SHORT side.

Each day at 12:00 UTC, the long holders of XBTUSD pay the USD lending rate, and receive the BTC rate. The short holders of XBTUSD receive the USD lending rate and pay the BTC rate. The example in our infographic is USD rate (0.05%) - BTC rate (0.01%) = net financing rate 0.04%.

You might be wondering: hey, why would anyone stay long if they know they are going to pay this stupid daily rate? Why not just sell it 1 hour before and avoid it? The answer is: it is more expensive to do this because you will pay a 0.075% fee to do a taker sell in order to get out. This means that nobody who is rational will be offering you the ability to get out and profit from missing the payment that a long holder has to have. Similarly for those who want to make a quick short interest payout, they can't simply short at a market price that will be above spot, allowing them to earn the interest without any cost.

The closer to this 12:00 UTC daily payment, the more the market discount will be to reflect this inability for long or short holders to arbitrage and get a free lunch from this.

Example of Future Value of BTCUSD using BitMEX Swap

Following through with the infographic example and the futures example, let's show what the value of BTCUSD looks like in BitMEX's product.

Assuming the same parameters: 0.05% USD rate, 0.01% BTC rate. Going long at XBTUSD at spot $500 and holding for 7 days results in:

$500*(1+(0.0005-0.0001)*7)=$501.4

This value is identical to that which is seen in the theoretical equilibrium price in prior section for 7-day future price of bitcoin.

Trading XBTUSD Perpetual Swap in Practice

Here's what the orderbook looks like trading XBTUSD. It will be identical to what you're used to if you've traded at BitMEX futures contracts, you have the number of contracts, the price, and it's that simple, long and it goes up makes you profit, short and it goes down and you make profit.



Just like on the old XBTUSD24H daily contracts, you can go 100x leverage. Meaning you only need 1% margin to trade a position. So if you want to go long with 0.1 BTC then you can take a position as large as 10 BTC! However, this makes you vulnerable to a margin call if the price ends up moving against you in a short time.



You can also choose lower leverage, or even Cross Margin if you'd like to use your whole bitcoin balance on BitMEX to cover your positions in a contract. However, it's best to isolate it at some leverage amount, so slide the little slider to indicate how much margin you would like to allocate toward the position. No matter what amount you choose, the XBTUSD swap product has a 0.5% maintenance margin, meaning that when the position goes against you until you only have 0.5% of the notional amount remaining allocated, you will be liquidated.

And just like before on BitMEX: the flip side of 100x leverage means that there's socialised losses (called DPE on BitMEX) which can reduce your profits every Friday in the settlement of profit
This means that when you are trading between Friday evening and next Friday morning, your profits in trading XBTUSD will not be able to be withdrawn until the PNL is settled and any DPE is restarted. This is a minor disadvantage to being able to trade with 100x leverage on a product which essentially tracks spot.

Futures vs. BitMEX Perpetual Swap

The new XBTUSD swap product from BitMEX is a unique and innovative way for traders to speculate on the future value of bitcoin. It has benefits above futures contracts in that they do not expire. When the net financing rate difference between USD and BTC is positive, short holders will earn a daily interest rate payout. If the net financing rate is negative (which is not likely to happen) then long holders would earn daily interest.

One potential downside to this is that while the leverage you access is interest-free, if you're a longholder you will pay financing charges in order to compensate the shortholders for the financing differential in the synthesis explained earlier in this article. However, this is in effect the same as if you were going long on a futures contract at a premium, the difference is that the interest in the swap you pay over time, while the interest in the future is baked into the price.

Don't be scared of the BitMEX XBTUSD swaps. They are really just futures by a different name: you use them in order to speculate on changes in price and you can even earn interest while trading too!

Sign up for BitMEX and get started trading now, get 10% discount on fees.

web version here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/demonstration-of-trading-cryptofacilities-50x-leverage-turbo-btcusd-futures-using-only-bitcoin



The new CryptoFacilities Turbo contracts have taken the bitcoin trading community by storm. The London-based bitcoin futures exchange has FCA regulation and recently collaborated with CME, so they're a trusted name in the space. While other exchanges offer high leverage with profit clawbacks and waiting period to withdraw profits, CryptoFacilities allows you max 50x leverage trading with no clawbacks! Your profit is available to withdraw instantly.

Visit the generic CryptoFacilities walkthrough we have to get started with setting up your account and depositing. Here we will go over the specific Turbo product and how you can trade safely with high leverage. Start by going to the "Account" section of the site to fund your Turbo account:



Clicking the "Transfer" link will give you this popup, where you can transfer coin from your Cash or Futures account into Turbo:



Once you have funded your Turbo account, go to the "Trading" section of the site to open the actual trading platform:
​


If you already are trading on CryptoFacilities then you will find this familiar. That's because The Turbo Futures are identical to the Futures (normal ones), just with higher leverage. Notice on the left in the picture above, the orderbook of the contract you have selected. You can click the Weekly or Biweekly Turbo Futures after clicking the Tab "Turbo Futures". This will allow you then to execute MKT (market), LMT (limit) and STP (stop limit) orders.



Each contract on CryptoFacilities is worth 1 Bitcoin. As an example, I'm going to go SHORT 2 Contracts (2 BTC), and on the right you can see the Initial Margin Buy and Sell requirements. For the Sell it shows 0.041 BTC. That means I am able to short 2 BTC worth of bitcoin with only 0.041 BTC. That's about 50x leverage.

Note: If you are already in a position, the Initial Margin on the right side will show as 0 BTC, because it won't cost you any margin to exit a position. If you are short and have, say, a -1 Contract position, then you just Buy 1 contract in the market to close out your position.

Back to the trading: you can make it a market or a limit order, I decided to press "Market" and then sell the 2 contracts -- REMEMBER YOU DO NOT NEED TO "OWN" FUTURES CONTRACTS TO SELL THEM SHORT! You are just taking one side of the contract and putting up margin to be short. See the main futures guide to learn these basics if you're confused.



You can see in the Trade History the 2 contract sell got filled and now I have a position short in the Turbo Futures on biweekly. This means now I have a -2 Contracts Position on May16-W5 turbo contract. In order to close out this position, I would need to Buy 2 Contracts to go flat. In this case, I would hope for the price to go down, then look in the orderbook for a nice place to buy and get a positive profit.

If I went LONG and was +2 Contracts Position, I would just need to SELL 2 contracts in order to close out my position and capture any profit (or loss). You can go long just as easily as you can go short on BTCUSD using CryptoFacilities bitcoin futures contracts. All it requires is bitcoin to put in margin, and the exchange manages the risk well with liquidations and termination to avoid any social loss clawback of profits.

This is how easy it is. You can monitor your PNL under "account" and then "Margin Accounts". Click "Bitcoin Futures" or "Bitcoin Turbos" to show either summary and you will get an overview of what your liquidation and termination thresholds are too:



That's really how simple it is to trade Turbo 50x leverage BTCUSD contracts on CryptoFacilities. You can transfer more bitcoin into your Turbo account if you want to use less leverage than 50x. So if you put 0.1 BTC in there and trade 2 contracts, you will be at about 20-25x leverage rather than 50x, which is maybe more what you're used to at a site like OKCoin.

Enjoy trading on CryptoFacilities with NO clawbacks, no waiting for withdrawing your profits, and not being worried about any shadiness because they are properly audited and have FCA regulatory recognition.

Get $10 in Bitcoin when you sign up and make your first trade using this link.

web version: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-bitmexs-new-xbtusd-swap-product



Bitcoin derivatives exchange BitMEX has made another strategic pivot recently by announcing they were going to stop issuing new futures contracts and instead focus on new swap products which pay (and deduct) interest from users who are short (or long). Perhaps most importantly: the contract never expires, so you are never forced out of your position because of any settlement.

They started by releasing the ETHBTC swap product and have now swept their product offering of futures with this new swap product. There's a lot of confusion surrounding this new product, but it can be quite simple once you understand a few financial principles. Patiently read through this article if you would like to understand why there's a premium, and what the Bitfinex BTC and USD rates have to do with the price of futures and the behavior of the BitMEX XBTUSD swap.

What does the future value of BTCUSD represent?

In financial theory, it's quite simple how this is done. The future value of BTC/USD is merely the realisation of what a creditworthy individual can do by borrowing USD to invest in BTC. You can play with our Fair Price calculator here to see how different rates affect the theoretical equilibrium value of BTCUSD in the future.

In our post on Why Bitcoin Futures Tend to Trade at a Premium to Spot, we went briefly into the Covered Interest Parity and how this is a major indicator of the proper futures rate because it shows the arbitrage condition. Let's revisit this concept in a different light to understand the BitMEX swap product XBTUSD.

In practice there are frictions in the market. You can't fluidly go to Bitfinex and borrow BTC in order to sell it for USD, which you then use to lend out at a higher rate than you borrow BTC. This requires collateral, which defeats the purpose, and fees and other costs make this less easy too. However, in a well adjusted and efficient market, this is how the prices are governed, so try to keep an open mind and understand the theory behind it without getting too autistic about the practical details.

Just like in our infographic above, we make the same assumptions, BTC/USD = $500, USD borrow and lending rate is 0.05% per day at Bitfinex, and BTC rate is 0.01%. Let's say then that the futures price for a weekly contract settling in 7 days was the same price, $500. An arbitrageur sees this price and thinks, wait, can't I borrow BTC at 0.01% and just sell them for USD and lend out at 5x the rate at 0.05% and earn a return? He would earn each of those rates every day for 7 days, paying 0.07% in bitcoin and earning 0.35% in USD. In his mind, $500 is a bargain because he can actually really make:

1.0035/1.007 * 500 = $501.4

Just by earning the interest differential. This incentivizes him to then buy the $500 future because he can synthesize the value of bitcoin in 7 days in the financing market and sell at $501.4.

This market pressure through arbitrage leads eventually to the market price of the 7-day BTCUSD future to converge to this Covered Interest Parity price.

Covered Interest Parity makes sense, so what does this mean for swaps?

The prior section was just a refresher on how the BTC and USD financing markets affect the price of futures contracts, which themselves represent the future value of Bitcoin in USD. Now, turning back to BitMEX's swap product, which is a "Perpetual Swap", what difference is there between buying XBTUSD and holding it for 7 days, and buying a BTCUSD futures contract expiring in 7 days? In theory, there is no difference, both are just different ways to arrive at the future value of Bitcoin in USD.

With this in mind, we look at the BitMEX XBT swap contract specifications:



Remember that BitMEX is a pure-bitcoin site, so you are only depositing and trading with BTC as collateral. However, each contract on XBTUSD represents $1 in value. Just like their futures contracts, every contract has a customer as counterparty who is on the LONG and the SHORT side.

Each day at 12:00 UTC, the long holders of XBTUSD pay the USD lending rate, and receive the BTC rate. The short holders of XBTUSD receive the USD lending rate and pay the BTC rate. The example in our infographic is USD rate (0.05%) - BTC rate (0.01%) = net financing rate 0.04%.

You might be wondering: hey, why would anyone stay long if they know they are going to pay this stupid daily rate? Why not just sell it 1 hour before and avoid it? The answer is: it is more expensive to do this because you will pay a 0.075% fee to do a taker sell in order to get out. This means that nobody who is rational will be offering you the ability to get out and profit from missing the payment that a long holder has to have. Similarly for those who want to make a quick short interest payout, they can't simply short at a market price that will be above spot, allowing them to earn the interest without any cost.

The closer to this 12:00 UTC daily payment, the more the market discount will be to reflect this inability for long or short holders to arbitrage and get a free lunch from this.

Example of Future Value of BTCUSD using BitMEX Swap

Following through with the infographic example and the futures example, let's show what the value of BTCUSD looks like in BitMEX's product.

Assuming the same parameters: 0.05% USD rate, 0.01% BTC rate. Going long at XBTUSD at spot $500 and holding for 7 days results in:

$500*(1+(0.0005-0.0001)*7)=$501.4

This value is identical to that which is seen in the theoretical equilibrium price in prior section for 7-day future price of bitcoin.

Trading XBTUSD Perpetual Swap in Practice

Here's what the orderbook looks like trading XBTUSD. It will be identical to what you're used to if you've traded at BitMEX futures contracts, you have the number of contracts, the price, and it's that simple, long and it goes up makes you profit, short and it goes down and you make profit.



Just like on the old XBTUSD24H daily contracts, you can go 100x leverage. Meaning you only need 1% margin to trade a position. So if you want to go long with 0.1 BTC then you can take a position as large as 10 BTC! However, this makes you vulnerable to a margin call if the price ends up moving against you in a short time.



You can also choose lower leverage, or even Cross Margin if you'd like to use your whole bitcoin balance on BitMEX to cover your positions in a contract. However, it's best to isolate it at some leverage amount, so slide the little slider to indicate how much margin you would like to allocate toward the position. No matter what amount you choose, the XBTUSD swap product has a 0.5% maintenance margin, meaning that when the position goes against you until you only have 0.5% of the notional amount remaining allocated, you will be liquidated.

And just like before on BitMEX: the flip side of 100x leverage means that there's socialised losses (called DPE on BitMEX) which can reduce your profits every Friday in the settlement of profit
This means that when you are trading between Friday evening and next Friday morning, your profits in trading XBTUSD will not be able to be withdrawn until the PNL is settled and any DPE is restarted. This is a minor disadvantage to being able to trade with 100x leverage on a product which essentially tracks spot.

Futures vs. BitMEX Perpetual Swap

The new XBTUSD swap product from BitMEX is a unique and innovative way for traders to speculate on the future value of bitcoin. It has benefits above futures contracts in that they do not expire. When the net financing rate difference between USD and BTC is positive, short holders will earn a daily interest rate payout. If the net financing rate is negative (which is not likely to happen) then long holders would earn daily interest.

One potential downside to this is that while the leverage you access is interest-free, if you're a longholder you will pay financing charges in order to compensate the shortholders for the financing differential in the synthesis explained earlier in this article. However, this is in effect the same as if you were going long on a futures contract at a premium, the difference is that the interest in the swap you pay over time, while the interest in the future is baked into the price.

Don't be scared of the BitMEX XBTUSD swaps. They are really just futures by a different name: you use them in order to speculate on changes in price and you can even earn interest while trading too!

Sign up for BitMEX and get started trading now, get 10% discount on fees.

web version here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/bitmex-introduces-perpetual-swap-for-ethbtc-earn-interest-while-shorting-ethereum-using-bitcoin-how-does-it-work



Yesterday, BitMEX introduced its 25x leverage perpetual swap for ETHBTC pair called ETHXBT. CEO Arthur Hayes wrote a "Swaps 101" that tries to explain how it works.

The basics of the product are that there is no expiration, so you can keep your position open forever, as if it were just a spot or margin position. Every day, instead of normal settlement or any expiration, the principal PNL is realized and ready for withdrawal and an interest payment based on the net Poloniex ETH and BTC lending rates is sent from traders who are long ETHXBT to traders who are short on ETHXBT.

A trader who is long ETHXBT contract on BitMEX will receive the ETH lending rate as an interest payment, and pay the BTC lending rate. On the flip side, traders on the short side of ETHXBT will receive the BTC lending rate and pay the ETH lending rate. Because of the supply and price difference between ETH and BTC, the net of the rate used to make the payment will almost always be positive for shorters on ETHBTC and negative for those who are long.



Example of Trading BitMEX ETHXBT Perpetual Swap


To give an example of how it works, let's say you are short ETHXBT, you have two ways to profit:

1) The interest payment you get at 12:00 UTC each day (positive most of the time when you're short).

2) The decline in the price, which will track spot market value

How much interest will you earn? Look at Poloniex for the reference, below is BTC lending rate:



And if you're short, you also have to pay the ETH lending rate, which will almost always be less than the BTC rate, so the net amount will be that you receive. But the payment will roughly equal what you see on Poloniex:



See the historical values of what BitMEX pays for ETH and BTC lending rates here:



If you are short, for example, 100 contracts at 0.02 ETHBTC, worth 2 BTC, then you would have gotten on Friday 0.1306-0.0217 = 0.1089% payment, or ​0.002178 BTC. If you were long 100 contracts, you would have had to pay this amount to the short holders.

This is because you are borrowing at a higher rate in BTC and then investing at a lower rate at ETH if you are long ETHXBT, this makes it usually cost money to be leveraged long. Conversely, if you are borrowing ETH to go long BTC, you're paying a lower ETH rate to earn a higher BTC rate, and earning interest when leverage short ETHXBT.

It might seem daunting at first, but it's really as simple as just trading it as if it's spot or margin. You get daily PNL realisation as well as the interest rate payment (positive if short Ethereum, negative if long Ethereum -- most of the time).

Get 10% off fees trading this product and 100x leverage BTC contracts and more here.

web version here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/bitmex-introduces-perpetual-swap-for-ethbtc-earn-interest-while-shorting-ethereum-using-bitcoin-how-does-it-work



Yesterday, BitMEX introduced its 25x leverage perpetual swap for ETHBTC pair called ETHXBT. CEO Arthur Hayes wrote a "Swaps 101" that tries to explain how it works.

The basics of the product are that there is no expiration, so you can keep your position open forever, as if it were just a spot or margin position. Every day, instead of normal settlement or any expiration, the principal PNL is realized and ready for withdrawal and an interest payment based on the net Poloniex ETH and BTC lending rates is sent from traders who are long ETHXBT to traders who are short on ETHXBT.

A trader who is long ETHXBT contract on BitMEX will receive the ETH lending rate as an interest payment, and pay the BTC lending rate. On the flip side, traders on the short side of ETHXBT will receive the BTC lending rate and pay the ETH lending rate. Because of the supply and price difference between ETH and BTC, the net of the rate used to make the payment will almost always be positive for shorters on ETHBTC and negative for those who are long.



Example of Trading BitMEX ETHXBT Perpetual Swap


To give an example of how it works, let's say you are short ETHXBT, you have two ways to profit:

1) The interest payment you get at 12:00 UTC each day (positive most of the time when you're short).

2) The decline in the price, which will track spot market value

How much interest will you earn? Look at Poloniex for the reference, below is BTC lending rate:



And if you're short, you also have to pay the ETH lending rate, which will almost always be less than the BTC rate, so the net amount will be that you receive. But the payment will roughly equal what you see on Poloniex:



See the historical values of what BitMEX pays for ETH and BTC lending rates here:



If you are short, for example, 100 contracts at 0.02 ETHBTC, worth 2 BTC, then you would have gotten on Friday 0.1306-0.0217 = 0.1089% payment, or ​0.002178 BTC. If you were long 100 contracts, you would have had to pay this amount to the short holders.

This is because you are borrowing at a higher rate in BTC and then investing at a lower rate at ETH if you are long ETHXBT, this makes it usually cost money to be leveraged long. Conversely, if you are borrowing ETH to go long BTC, you're paying a lower ETH rate to earn a higher BTC rate, and earning interest when leverage short ETHXBT.

It might seem daunting at first, but it's really as simple as just trading it as if it's spot or margin. You get daily PNL realisation as well as the interest rate payment (positive if short Ethereum, negative if long Ethereum -- most of the time).

Get 10% off fees trading this product and 100x leverage BTC contracts and more here.

Bitcoin CFD site Whale Club has added more products, allowing you to trade tech stocks like Apple, Facebook, and Tesla Motors using just your bitcoin!

The growth at WhaleClub continues. It's now simple to trade stocks using bitcoin, no KYC or AML required at all. When you sign up over at WhaleClubCo you will be able to send your bitcoin and trade using up to 10x leverage right away. Here's how it looks trading Apple on their platform:



Is 10x too much leverage for you, and you just want to take a lower-risk low-leverage position? Then you simply adjust your leverage down. Here's how it looks trading Facebook for example:



Notice that you have leverage 1x, and that means you pay NO financing fees! It's just like you are owning the stock or shorting the stock, with no interest charges. That's the benefit of trading stocks with bitcoin at WhaleClub, you can either go 10x and take big risks, or just use it like an investment portfolio where you're using your btc to make savings as if in a brokerage account essentially.

Sign up now at WhaleClub using this link and they will give you a 100% match on your first deposit!

http://www.whaleclubdepositbonus.com

Use bitcoin to trade instantly the major financial products on global markets:




Whale Club (also known as WhaleClub or WhaleClubCo) is a bitcoin-only site based in the Seychelles which offers you access to the global markets. They have a growing product offering which starte with BTC/USD at 10x leverage, and now offers Gold at 20x leverage, Oil at 10x leverage, and EURUSD at 40x leverage. The idea is simple: you use your bitocin, say 1 BTC, and the leverage, example 10x, allows you trade with 10 BTC. This means if you go long Oil and it goes up 10%, you will earn 100% and double your 1 BTC. Whale Club allows you to trade these as Contracts for Differences (CFDs) and you can try RISK-FREE with their DEMO trading platform. It is identical to their live site, so you can feel free to test your strategies.

web http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/shapeshiftio-hacked-loses-unspecified-portion-of-hot-wallet-funds-taken-offline



Erik Voorhees' exchange ShapeShift has been hacked and lost an unspecified portion of funds from its hot wallet. They have taken down their website and are rebuilding part of their infrastructure to fix it, they say. They claim that no customer funds have been lost.




The full extent of the damage is not known and until customers can actually take their bitcoin out and verify they are safe, we won't know the truth.

Cryptsy was able to hide thousands of missing coins from their customers for years, so don't trust anybody out there in this industry.

web: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/media-speculation-grows-that-satoshi-will-reveal-himself-as-early-as-this-weekend-april-9-10-2016



A major warning that this is likely to be total bullshit, but there's a lot of attention garnering around it, so the claims are being addressed here.

There's been speculation swirling lately, recently from the Financial Times, and now The Mirror, that Craig Wright will be revealing and verifying himself to be Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin protocol:



The Mirror is just a low-tier tabloid that has published garbage anonymous false claims about ISIS holding bitcoin in the past, so they are not a credible outlet, and especially not credible on bitcoin stories.

However, as the news spreads in the mainstream, and as this could be a major media event, about a story that may very well be false, it may affect the market as well.

Keep in mind that volatility is at some of its lowest levels in a long time (source):



We are due for volatility in one direction of another. And if this technical fact coincides with a major media FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) bomb hits, that direction might be down.

This post is not intended to alarm or anything, merely to alert that this is something the media is planning and there has been info coming out about this, which may itself affect the market. It may be a self-fulfilling prophecy by those behind it, but either way, it is something to consider while we are inevitably going to awake from this low volatility period.

​Happy trading.

CFD site Whale Club has now introduced financial products you can trade outside of just BTC/USD. Now you can trade a wide array of global financial assets using only your bitcoin. And remember, WhaleClub allows you to trade risk-free on a demo account before you are comfortable to go LIVE. And when you want to trade with real money live, use this link to get a 100% deposit match

The new products they are offering are:
Gold up to 20x leverage.



EURUSD up to 40x leverage:



OIL at up to 10x leverage:



You can now use your bitcoin on Whale Club Co to trade the world markets with no verification and at moderate leverage to give you some good profit potential.

Give them a try risk-free on the demo.

may be easier to read web version: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/reminder-chinese-bitcoin-spot-exchanges-okcoin-and-huobi-are-faking-a-majority-of-their-trading-volume



To most traders it is common knowledge that Chinese exchanges fake their volume, whether it's OkCoin and Huobi's spot or futures exchanges. Here's an example from Huobi to demonstate the absurdity of the fraud they are committing:



On the 1-day candles you see the volume at over 2.2 Million BTC being traded on Huobi.

And here's the same chart for OKCoin:



Oh no! Only 2 million BTC daily volume on OKCoin. They lose the fake volume competition with Huobi Shame to their family.

Raise your hand if you think OKcoin and Huobi are really trading 4.5 Million bitcoin per day, almost 1/3 of the current supply:



So we don't even need any more information than this to know that they are committing fraud in their trading volume. Taking 1,000 BTC and trading it between two exchange accounts at 0% fees and reporting it like it's a normal transaction would be a criminal offence in any regulated environment.

If that wasn't enough though, we have its own competitors blowing the whistle on them, in an ignored interview the CEO Bobby Lee did, he clearly calls them out for this practice:


The two largest exchanges in bitcoin, OKcoin and Huobi, are lying about how much trading volume they really do. This should be a scandal, but it's par for the course in bitcoinland. Pressure should always be put on exchanges to be honest and transprent, but people should focus on what the real problems are when our "market leaders" are up to no good like this.

OKCoin's ex CTO "CZ" also blew the whistle on their fraudulent trading volume data:


Take this as a public service announcement: do not trust OKCoin or Huobi Chinese bitcoin exchange volume, it's mostly fake and is not an indication of anything but how desperate they are to create an appearance of dominance in the market. This is beyond mere speculation, as it has been confirmed by C level executives and top players in the business.

This post is not to be taken as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor, you are responsible for your own account.

Our site is most well known for its informative technical guide to understanding futures contracts and how they are traded in bitcoin exchanges. What we don't focus as much on is profit-making strategies in trading bitcoin futures.

The most important principle is of course supply and demand. All else equal:
higher demand -> price up,
higher supply -> price down,
lower demand -> price down,
​lower supply -> price up​

The question is, with all the variables that are in play, what wins out? The factors that are raising demand vs. lowering demand vs. raising supply vs. lowering supply. It's a big puzzle that you have to figure out yourself by using a model to determine what the dominant factors are and the net effect between them all.

There's three main profit-strategies you can do when trading:

1. Arbitrage - exploiting price differences between exchanges. This includes for example if you're buying and selling between Bitfinex and Bitstamp or you are buying on spot and selling over-the-counter at 10% premium. The name of the game is increasing efficiency in the market by making full-loop arbitrage plays that make it so you can pocket the difference of BTC/USD on two different exchanges. The question is, will fees and volatility in the time you have to transfer between exchanges be too high to let you profit?

2. Technical Analysis - "The trend is your friend", "head and shoulders", "double bottom" -- these are the cries of TA traders who use often esoteric charting techniques to come up with ideas for positions. There are countless indicators that serve varying degrees of usefulness to traders. Some will swear by using MACD, others will insist that Stochastic RSI is the most important. Moving average crosses are also common, such as the "death cross" which even legacy market traders use. The art of charting will never go away in any market, and bitcoin traders are very fond of their tools and predictions on where price will go based purely on their chart techniques.

3. Fundamental Analysis - These are trade ideas and position entries based on real news and information that affects bitcoin development or the ecosystem that would lead people to be more willing to buy (higher demand) or sell (higher supply). Here's a list of events that would trigger someone to formulate a trade strategy based on fundamental info:
Exchange hacks,
Hard fork drama,
Protocol development news,
Spam attacks,
Bank announcing investment/interest in bitcoin
You get the point. With fundamental strategies, as opposed to technical, you are not as concerned with what the price is relative to its past price, but with how actual events and news will drive price.

No matter what strategy you use, risk management in your trade is paramount. You have to make sure your leverage is not too high, or that the amount you are using to trade with is not too much of a proportion of your portfolio if you're at high leverage.

If you're not careful, trading ends up becoming like gambling. If you go into it with NO strategy whatsoever, no arbitrage play or no technical indicator reasoning, or no fundamental reasoning -- then you are just gambling. When you have very high leverage to trade futures, it can feel a lot like a slot machine or a roulette where you just put down an amount of money and see how it goes.

What differentiates trading from gambling is that you are handling financial instruments for investment returns with proper risk management. Gambling is reckless and should be seen instead as entertainment, not a serious way to make money over time. Poker players may disagree, but poker is not a pure game of chance.

View web version: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/how-to-profit-trading-bitcoin-futures-arbitrage-speculation-strategies

see full web version here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/federal-reserve-price-differences-across-exchanges-show-that-bitcoin-is-not-really-frictionless



The New York branch of the Federal Reserve published a paper today called Is Bitcoin Really Frictionless. It digs into the prices of bitcoin on three major USD spot exchanges: Bitfinex, BTC-e, and Bitstamp. It's an overall interesting paper with some good analysis and graphs and appears to be a genuine attempt to investigate bitcoin price issues.

The main point of the paper is to analyze how and why bitcoin price on these three exchanges differs so much, and to state that bitcoin is not really frictionless in this sense. Some of the culprits they point to are volatility, using this graph as a starting point they see the relationship it has between price differentials:



The main reason why price differences would exist between two exchanges on a fungible commodity like bitcoin is that there are barriers to efficiently arbitraging, or profiting from these price differences.  Normally if Exchange A has a price at $400 and Exchange B has a price of $410, you can simply buy at A and sell at B and earn $10.  

However in practice there are issues in waiting for wire transfers, bitcoin confirmations and risking volatility in the meantime, as well as fees:



The authors did a good job of analyzing the raw empirical data, compiling interesting relationships since 2013 on the three exchanges in question:



They even dig into the issue of exchange risk to explain why BTC-e trades persistently at a discount:

EXCHANGE FAILURE OR FRAUD IS ANOTHER SOURCE OF RISK. EXCHANGE FAILURE IS NOT MERELY A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY IN BITCOIN MARKETS—IT OCCURS REGULARLY. A STUDY IN 2013 REPORTED THAT EIGHTEEN OF THE FORTY BITCOIN EXCHANGES ANALYZED—ALMOST HALF—ULTIMATELY FAILED. MOST NOTABLE AMONG ALL BITCOIN EXCHANGE FAILURES IS THAT OFMT. GOX, AN EXCHANGE THAT ONCE COMMANDED THE LARGEST SHARE OF THE MARKET AND LOST ROUGHLY $460 MILLION WORTH OF ITS USERS’ BITCOIN TO HACKERS IN 2014. COUNTERPARTY RISK COULD HELP EXPLAIN THE CONSISTENT DISCOUNT REALIZED ON BTC-E. UNLIKE BITFINEX AND BITSTAMP, BTC-E DOES NOT PUBLISH THE LOCATION OF ITS OPERATIONS, AND LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT ITS OWNERS. SUCH OPACITY MAY DETER USERS FROM USING THE EXCHANGE FOR GREATER PERCEIVED PROBABILITY OF BANKRUPTCY, WHICH WOULD ENDANGER USERS’ ACCOUNTS, OR FRAUD. ​

In total it's an interesting and well done paper, considering they are researchers working at the Fed. It seems intellectually honest and the conclusions are not meant to disparage bitcoin but just investigate why arbitrageurs don't close the price differences between major Bitcoin spot exchanges.

web: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/new-bitfury-data-shows-that-over-half-of-classic-nodes-come-from-amazon-choopa-not-dedicated-servers



When you look at the node counts of different varieties of Bitcoin, you will see numbers such as from Coin.Dance



Which indicates that Classic has almost half the nodes as Bitcoin Core. "Impressive!" you may think to yourself. Over at Bitnodes you get similar numbers:



A less informed observer may now be misled into thinking that a significant proportion of bitcoiners, represented through nodes, are supporters of Classic rather than Core.

However thanks to Alex Petrov and Bitfury we have some more detailed data about the providers of the IP addresses of the nodes, and divided amongst Classic and Core we see that there is a significant difference. Let's look first at the Core distribution:



We see a pretty decentralized distribution here, the most common provider is Hetzner at 8%, but the bulk of the nodes are distributed across nearly 1,000 different providers.
And for comparison, here's the Classic distribution by provider:



What sticks out immediately from this data is how centralized the node distribution is for Classic. A whopping 31% of them are Amazon.com, while 23% are Choopa. So two conglomerate VPS providers have a duopoly over node count on the Classic side.

This is likely a result of various campaigns by wealthy bitcoin holders who support Classic, who have pushed for artificially inflating the Classic-supporting node count by spinning up instances at VPS providers/datacenters.

Interestingly, some Classic supporters, such as Brian Armstrong, still are touting the growing nodecount as a victory, despite this data showing that it is artificially inflated:



Some are choosing to continue to fight, while most people have moved on from the Classic vs. Core debate. The issue was settled when the Core laid out a clear road map and the Roundtable Consensus from miners came overwhelmingly in support of Core, who agreed to a blocksize increase after Segregated Witness is being rolled out next month, and developing Lightning Network on the side.

I focused right now on BTC/USD. CFD sites of course offer a lot more products/contracts which can be traded and they have different fees