FTX.COM - CRYPTOVERSE AMA RECAP
14TH SEPTEMBER 2019
GUEST : Darren W — CMO @ ftx.com Head of BD
Sam Bankman Fried
Hello welcome to Cryptoverse glad to have you here @SamBankmanFried and @dwong23
Q. Please introduce to our Indian community about FTX
A — FTX (FTX.com) is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. It has perpetual futures, quarterly futures, leveraged tokens, spot markets, OTC trading, and much more.
Some of the more unique parts of it:
1) leveraged tokens (https://ftx.com/tokens) allow you to get leverage without managing margin; you just do spot trades in tokens that are themselves leveraged
2) comprehensive risk engine to prevent clawbacks
3) futures on lots of unique products: indexes (e.g. https://ftx.com/trade/SHIT-PERP), exchange tokens, USDT, etc.
4) USD based cross margin — you only need one single margin wallet for the entire exchange. You can use USD, USDT, BTC, FTT, and soon ETH as collateral
5) a trading competition coming up next month: Battle Royale! https://battle-royale.ftx.com/rules
Q — USA and China can also sign up for ftx exchange?
A — China is allowed, the US is not
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Q — Will there be any discount on future/swap position fee (Interest) if one holding $FTX?”
A — There are trading fee discounts if you hold FTT — see here: https://ftx.com/ftt
The perpetual swap funding rates aren’t fees — the exchagne doesn’t charge them, and you can make or lose money from them. So there isn’t a discount on them, because you can make money from them too; they’re just a transfer between short and long positions
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Q — What future developments would you expect would be most appealing to larger institutions on the FTX?”
A — 1) we’re releasing our first options products this week! https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033136331-MOVE-contracts
2) really low fees for huge volume institutional traders: https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032890872
3) maximum matching engine latency < 200ms
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Q — Lots liquidity stuck in altcoins, as many people holding alts for a turnaround, are there any chances to trade with FTX”
A — You can trade lots of ALT futures on FTX, including an index of altcoins: https://ftx.com/trade/ALT-PERP
So you can use those to hedge, We’ll also soon allow ETH as collateral on FTX.
But you could also, e.g.:
a) sell your XRP for USDT
b) use the USDT as collateral on FTX
c) get 1x long https://ftx.com/trade/XRP-PERP, effectively buying back your XRP
d) do the other trades you wanted to do
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Q — Why does the team name the project FTX? What does it mean? And where did the idea come from to team up the project?
A — It’s a pretty arbitrary name — it came from [F]u[T]ures e[X]change
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Q — Currently, the most concerned issue is the level of safety and security. So with FTX, how secure is it? And what technology does FTX use to ensure user safety and security?”
A — 1) we use industry standard hot/cold wallets, and the hot wallet is backed by capital
2) we allow for 2FA, withdrawal passwords, etc.
3) we have a custom built risk engine to manage liquidations and prevent clawbacks: https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027668712-Liquidations
In addition to safety and security, convenience is also a matter of concern. So with FTX, what is the transaction speed and transaction fee? “
No deposit or withdrawal fees! We’ll cover the blockchain fees :)
We process withdrawals almost immediately, and even large withdrawals will be processed within an hour
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Q — Is FTX available for phones?
A — We do have an andriod app but we’ll have fully redesigned mobile apps for both andriod and iphone coming out in the next few weeks
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Q — For newcomers to the Crypto market, using the exchange is quite difficult. So is the interface of FTX easy for newcomers?
A — We’ll let you be the judge of it. Different people have different preferences for interfaces.
But one thing that is really easy to use are leveraged tokens; instead of having to manage margin/collateral/liquidations etc. you can just buy a spot token and still get leverage! https://ftx.com/trade/MOON/USD for an exapmle, https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032509552-Leveraged-Token-Walkthrough for more info.
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Q — It is known that FTX has cooperated with many large electronic companies such as Circle, TrueUSD, Paxos PAX, Galois Capital, Lemniscap, …
This shows the success of FTX. So before being successful, is FTX facing any difficulties?
A — Rallying for support was definitely difficult at the beginning of FTX in a bear market where many new deriviatives exchanges were starting and had little differentiation. Luckily, prior to FTX we’ve been runing alameda research and have worked with many of the big players in the secondary market space. They are familiar with our professionalism and understanding of the derivatives space so it was easy to gain their support for FTX
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Q — Currently, there are many exchanges on the market. So what is special about FTX for users to decide on FTX
A — I think the biggest things are:
a) leveraged tokens
b) index futures
c) lots of liquidity
eg take a look at the sizes on https://ftx.com/trade/BTC-PERP
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Q — It is known that FTX is incubated by Alameda Research, a leading electronic currency liquidity provider. What are the benefits for FTX?
A — 1) REALLY liquid markets; check out https://ftx.com/trade/BTC-PERP!
2) a ton of industry experience, so FTX could launch futures, perpetual swaps, leveraged tokens, spot markets, OTC trading, and options in the first 5 months
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Q — What is weaknesses of your project that you want to improve in future that help to increasing of your network?
A — 1) some click and point traders have pointed out several room for improvements for our UI. However, institutional traders love the simplicity of our UI
2) acquiring customers and volume. The success of FTX and FTT price depends on how much volume the exchange can generate. We are working with many english and chinese speaking communities to educate and promote FTX to traders .
We also run creative marketing campaigns to try to acquire users. For instance, we are currently accepting sign ups for Battle Royale. A trading competition that has huge prizes (big and small prizes totalling ~180k usd) for Traders and Non Traders.
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Q — What is the blockchain ftt token issued on ?
A — ERC20; more details at https://ftx.com/ftt
We might dual-list it on both ERC20 and BEP2 to get it on Binance Dex; somewhere ont he stack
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Q — I know the current crypto market is causing everyone to FUD, but I just wanted to say that you guys are doing a good job of keeping to your dev schedule. Would you be able to tell us what your plans are beyond the release of the new platform? What can we expect in the next 5 years?
A — 1) options (https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033136331-MOVE-contracts is a start)
2) prediction markets (e.g. Trump 2020 binanry futures)
3) Gold etc. futures
4) more spot markets, and better banking support
5) mobile apps
6) entering new markets, hopefully the US
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Q — What is the strongest points FTX that helps to attract new investors on your network?
A — alot of these points have been covered above. But on a higher level:
- liquidity (we’re the most liquid exchange)
- responsive (we implement user feedback anywhere from a few hours to a few days) we have 24/7 customer support on FTX group too
- innovative new products
- well designed derivatives exchange built by traders, for traders
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Q — What has been the biggest technical challenge that you overcame this year? What is it that makes your solution better others similar projects?
A — 1) matching engine speed; we spent a bunch of time thinking about what could be in parallel and what needed to be serial so that we could keep data integrity while allowing the matching engine to scale up
2) a completely redesigned risk engine to help prevent clawbacks: https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027668712-Liquidations
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Q — Who is building on FTX and what are they doing? What are the major milestones you achieved so far?
A — Alameda Research.
1) launched perpetual swaps, futures, options, spot markets, OTC trading, index futures, etc.
2) $200m of daily volume in just a few months
3) TONS of liquidty
4) ~100 markets with cross margin and no matching engine latency issues
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Q — What facilities does FTX provide as prime broker? What is strategy to dominate the market? What is Team’s plan to attract investors and traders successfully? Are you see it as an opportunity while the current market decline?
A — 1) we’re not really a prime broker for other platforms right now but we DO offer cross margin so you can get centralized risk management on FTX between a ton of products
2) attracting investors is easy, it’s choosing between them that’s hard :P
3) getting traders: reaching out to large clients, managing communities on telegram/wechat/etc., social media, etc.
4) allowing for shorting makes derivatives exchanges more resilient to bear markets
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Q — Can you describe why we should use FTX? Which types of advantages traders perceive in your platform?
A- There are many products you can trade on FTX that can’t be found on any other derivatives exchange. In addition, we provide good liquidity for these products. These include:
- Shitoin index futures, MOVE options, USDT futures, Leveraged tokens
- FTX is very liquid
- FTX is continuously innovating and takign feedback from the community
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Q — What was the vision of FTX and how it looks now? Which market FTX focus on?
A — How many product have build on your platform? Can you tell some lights from them?
What will you do to driving FTX use cases and applications, especially in the Asean region?
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