Hi all. I joined up because I have a specific question about FUTX, but looks like I won't be able to reply to the relevant thread for a while. Any chance I can ask here and a kindly older member could copy + paste it on my behalf?
(Yes, I tried to google it. No, I didn't find any answer)
My question is:
"If I buy FUTX on an exchange, eg Cryptopia, what is really happening? Does Cryptopia send ETH to Futerex exchange and get FUTX back? What happens at rollover? Does my FUTX balance on Cryptopia just turn into ETH?"
Thanks a bunch if anyone can help! And no worries if you can't.
No. When you purchase FUTX off Cryptopia or off Crex24, both of which FUTX are available on (FUTR is only available on Crex24 for now although that is scheduled to change very shortly), you are buying FUTX from someone who has already value-mined the contract. What this means is that in effect you have 2 purchase options:
Purchase Option 1: You can mine FUTR/X anytime (unless it is in a restricted mining period at the point of a swap-back) by sending ETH to the smart contract
Purchase Option 2: You can purchase FUTR/X off the exchange from someone else who has already mined it (or bought it from someone who has already mined it)
The model employed whereby this "synthetic mining protocol" is constantly an option of purchase concurrently alongside exchange-traded applications is not typical of the traditional Blockchain approach, and the creators are well aware of this fact. Essentially, what Futereum does is to supplant the proof-of-work mining model with its "halvening" events (for instance in Bitcoin mining) with this form os synthetic smart contract mining which the creators call proof-of-value. POV applications essentially replace the requirement for any sort of POS mining protocol ever, since by synthetically paralleling the process of in-wallet mining off the back of proof-of-work applications, they achieve exactly the same thing as a result of the Ethereum Blockchain's token factory innovation. in this sense it is possible to see POV as a natural next step progression to Ethereum's re-invention of the Blockchain from being one whereby the software on the Blockchain was used to produce coins to one where it went to producing tokens. POV currencies that reference actual underlying value are termed "digital notes" by the developers.
Ultimately, you should check to see whether it is cheaper to purchase FUTR/X on an exchange or via the smart contract. For every day other than the first day of issuance, FUTX has pretty much traded ata discount to the ETH that is stored in its smart contract. That may not always be the case however, and with 100%+ moves in the past 24 hours and similar moves in recent weeks on the back of John McAffee's recommendation of this smart contract, it is entirely possible that premiums may open up for periods in the market (in which case you can just mine the smart contract and sell for an arbitrage fee into the exchange more or less on the spot).
The way to work out what you are paying for the tokens is as follows: take the current FUTX mined per level and use this number to divide the total dollar amount of ETH. Thus, Level 1 FUTX is:
$750/114 = $6.58/FUTX
We can then check this against the BTC value of FUTX by taking the price of BTC/FUTX. At the point of writing the last trade for FUTX was done at 0.00047218 BTC, thus if BTC is currently $9400, the price of FUTX is $4.43 on Cryptopia. Thus, there is a discount available on Cryptopia for FUTX to the tune of almost 50%. Bear in mind that such discounts however contain volume limitations. For instance, the discounted FUTX on offer is only valid for up to 0.29383547 BTC worth; after that point, FUTX becomes more expensive on exchange than it is in smart contract form. Thus, if you wanted to purchase $10,000 of FUTX, you would have to buy 75% or so of it from the smart contract if you wanted the cheapest possible purchase price.
Remember too that there is a 15.3% value mining charge applied to the Futereum contracts. This means that when you switch back FUTX for the ETH, you get 15.3% less ETH than you paid for when you mined FUTX. Thus, in the above example where you were buying $10,000 of FUTX, you would calculate the par value of your purchase as follows:
0.29383547 BTC * Avg. 0.00055 BTC = $5.17 average purchase price with $5.55 swap-back price
$7300 / $750 / ETH = $6.58 average purchase price * 84.7% with $5.55 swap-back price
