What is FTX?

As of February 2022, the FTX trade volume was averaging $10 billion daily. The exchange has over one million users, despite the fact that it is not available in the US and some other regions. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, founded the platform in 2018.

Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, CTO at FTX,  created Alameda Research Ltd in 2017, a market leading cryptocurrency liquidity provider. Before that, Bankman-Fried was an international ETF trader at Jane Street Capital.  Alameda Research assists FTX in OTC services. The exchange has partnered with firms like True USD, Circle, and FBG Capital for supporting the large volume trade activities of its users.

The platform managed to raise $8 million after three rounds of funding, and Liquid Value Capital became an investor of FTX in 2020.

FTX helps traders to diversify their crypto portfolios with a large selection of products. Let's look at the main services that allowed the crypto exchange to take its place among the market leaders.

A financial instrument that provides an opportunity to buy and sell assets at a predetermined price based on a contract between the two parties. The platform offers perpetual and quarterly margin futures (amount of trader’s money that must be in the account as collateral to support an active position). You can open both long and short positions on futures.

ERC20 tokens can be traded with leverage without a margin.  More than 100 different leveraged tokens are present on the trading platform. 

BTC options is a unique trading segment on FTX.  Options give “the right” (but not the obligation) to buy or sell an asset. Through this derivative, traders can speculate on the future price of crypto and hedge (insure) their open positions. 

FTX offers over 100 different spot trading pairs. Users have the opportunity to purchase crypto and then trade them using traditional techniques or market-matched orders. 

With this service traders on FTX can bet how far the price of a cryptocurrency will move over a time period, regardless of which direction it moves. Thus, it is like gambling based on market volatility.

The FTX platform also has an over-the-counter desk for traders who want to make big deals. It trades around $30 million per day without any fees.

In addition to the listed services, the exchange supports NFT listing, FTT token staking, competitions, IEO (Initial Exchange Offering). It makes forecasts and is engaged in predictive analytics. The platform also hosts voting (for example, which blockchains users want to see next in the list of supported ones.)

Fiat currency withdrawals valued at more than $5,000 USD are free, as is one withdrawal per week below that amount. There are no fees for deposits. However, the platform charges fees for futures and spot trades, which can be seen in the table below:

Leveraged tokens are charged with execution and redemption fees of 0.10%. The platform also charges a 0.03% daily management fee on these trades. 

All BTC withdrawals greater than 0.01 BTC are free. Withdrawals of less than 0.01 BTC per day are charged a fee of 0.1% after the first one, which is free. Users are required to pay the blockchain fees for all ETH, and ERC20 tokens unless they have FTT staked. Non-fungible token (NFT) fees are $1 to list an NFT using its self-service tool and 2% charged to the seller from each sale or trade.

FTX supports 9 fiat currencies for deposits (US dollar, Euro, British pound, Australian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Singapore dollar, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Brazilian real). Funds can be deposited via wire transfer or credit/debit cards. The platform uses Simplex as the online payment gateway for credit card deposits. Wire transfer fees are 1% of U.S. dollar deposits. There are no deposit fees for blockchain transfers.OTC trading requires an FTX crypto wallet.

FTT is the native token of the FTX crypto exchange. It was created to simplify payments within the platform. There is a total supply of 345 million FTT tokens, of which approx 95 million are in circulation.

FTT holders are eligible for commission discounts, which can be found in this table:

FTT holders receive socialized gains from the insurance fund while also earning the opportunity to burn their fees weekly. The token can be used as collateral for futures trading. If a holder stakes this utility token, the user will be able to participate in token airdrops, receive bonus votes in FTX's polls and and get a waiver from the blockchain fees. All these encourage traders to hold their FTT tokens.

In general, FTX is considered to be one of the best crypto trading platforms due to some exclusive products.