As we mentioned previously, perpetuals have a mechanism to ensure pricing aligns with the underlying spot product. We refer to the spread between the Spot and the Perpetual contract as Basis. The resulting exchange of payment between long and short holders of the contract is called the Basis Payment.

On EQONEX, we differentiate between the Market Price and the Mark Price of the perpetual. The Market Price is the last traded price of the product on EQONEX. The Market Price may deviate (significantly) from the rest of the market for example in case of large orders or an illiquid order book. The Mark Price gives a fairer value for the contract by taking a 3-second TWAP of the Market Price. A TWAP is the average of the open, high, low and close price for a specific period. In the case of the Mark Price these periods are three 1-second intervals. As the Mark Price is used for P&L calculation and to determine whether the position needs to be liquidated, using a TWAP to smooth out temporary spikes in prices should prevent unnecessary liquidations.

Perpetual futures are futures contracts with no maturity, as opposed to dated futures, which expire at a pre-set date and time such as every month or every quarter. Any position in a perpetual future stays open until the trader decides to close the trade by executing an offsetting trade, or until the trade gets liquidated by EQONEX.

As touched on last week, the industry standard is to perform no credit checks on traders, and there is no recourse for a trader that has accumulated negative margin balance to make good on their losses. Because of this, the crypto trading industry introduced auto-liquidation as a layer of protection for the exchange against potential losses as well as a guarantee that winning trades are honored… But how does this really work?

With the recent highs seen in the price of Ether (ETH), market validation of the smart-contract blockchain platform is strong. But as the price has risen, so has the question of ‘inflation’ on the platform.

We believe the emergence of cryptocurrency derivatives is the inevitable evolution of the digital asset class and should contribute to reductions in volatility and enhancing market efficiency.

Many virtual currency exchanges advertise the ability to trade products with leverage. In traditional finance, there are a number of popular leveraged products, such as ETFs. An ETF is a product that moves as a function of the underlying factor and the leverage factor. For example, an ETF that has 5x leverage will lose or gain 5% if the underlying asset moves by 1%. Leverage defines your position’s exposure to the underlying asset class.

This is the fourth article of our Digital Assets Decoded series which aims to give you a fundamental understanding of the cryptocurrency space.

A major factor in the popularity and success of crypto trading is the extreme volatility of digital assets. The sudden giant price fluctuations in either direction present abundant trading and arbitrage opportunities that rarely exist in traditional markets.

What are derivatives? Derivatives have been around for millennia; their use can be traced back to ancient times when people bartered with one another to trade perishable goods such as grain and livestock[1]. They gained widespread popularity during the rise of the financial services sector, when newer valuation techniques were created in the 1970s and rapidly developed the derivatives market. It is difficult to imagine modern finance without derivatives now.

Access is a digital asset trading tool from EQONEX that has been built on top of existing institutional platforms. A future-proof, multi-asset class integrated solution for sales, trading, risk management, operations, and distribution across multiple venues.

For traders, the primary motivation when trading is undoubtedly to earn a return on investment. Unnecessarily high transaction fees can, however, deplete trading account balances and erode returns, and so, serious investors will always look to minimize extra costs.

This is the third article of our Digital Assets Decoded series which aims to give you a fundamental understanding of the cryptocurrency space.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ethereum, has had the most significant update in its 5-year history. A major milestone has been achieved on the path to ‘Ethereum 2.0’, also known as ‘Eth2’, which represents a pivotal development in the evolution of the Ethereum blockchain.

This is the second article of our Digital Assets Decoded series which aims to give you a fundamental understanding of the cryptocurrency space. In our previous article, “What is Blockchain?”, we discussed what a blockchain is and how it stores data as a series of events.