- Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange and trading platform company FTX announced it raised $8 million in funding
FTX — a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange built by and for traders — announced that it raised $8 million in funding from Proof of Capital, Consensus Lab, FBG, and Galois Capital. Proof of Capital is a blockchain fund that was launched by HTC’s chief decentralized officer Phil Chen, Greylock Capital’s Chris McCann, and 500 Startups partner Edith Yeung.
FTX was incubated by Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm that trades up to $1 billion per day and manages over $100 million in digital assets. And FTX was developed by a highly experienced team of traders from financial institutions like Jane Street, Susquehanna, and Optiver.
Essentially, FTX provides traders and investment professionals with the most sophisticated futures trading exchange in the digital asset world. And the company’s platform offers futures trading, leveraged tokens, and an OTC portal.
“I’m personally very passionate about trading, so FTX is a platform built by traders, for traders,” said FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. “In creating FTX, I wanted to build a platform for professional traders like me, while also bringing crypto trading to the mass market and first-time users.”
Bankman-Fried used to be a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk where he traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities and helped design the firm’s automated OTC trading system. And FTX’s founding members — including CTO Gary Wang, COO Andrew Croghan, and others — bring decades of combined experience from leading organizations like Jane Street, Optiver, Susquehanna, Google, and Facebook.
“I am thrilled to partner with Sam and his team. His love for trading really shows in their product and Proof of Capital is honored to help the company go to market in Asia,” added McCann.
FTX supports quarterly and perpetual futures on major cryptocurrencies and altcoins like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), and Tether (USDT), along with various altcoin, midcap, and other indices. Along with the futures market, investors can also use the FTX platform to make OTC trades on over 20 coins with no fees and instant settlement.
The FTX proprietary technology and trading features make it one of the most liquid cryptocurrency exchanges in the market. For example, FTX’s liquidation engine prevents clawbacks by slowly closing overleveraged positions while minimizing market impact. And the platform’s backstop liquidity provider system also prevents accounts from going below bankruptcy level by automating liquidating and closing down at-risk accounts.
FTX’s leveraged tokens provide a way for traders to get up to 3x leverage without having to manage margin or risk getting liquidated. For example, the leveraged tokens call BULL, BEAR, and HEDGE represent a 3x, -3x and -1x BTC exposure.
Leading up to the fundraising, FTX recently crossed $300 million in total trading volume and launched several new features and products, such as spot orders, leaderboards, altcoin index futures, etc.
Plus the exchange also issued its native utility token (FTT), which provide holders with a number of unique benefits, such as ⅓ revenue buy and burn, lower trading fees, OTC rebates, and collateral for futures trading.
