First Time in Two Years! BitMEX Announces Launch of Chainlink and Tezos Futures Contracts

The cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX announced today that it will be adding futures contracts for Chainlink (LINK) and Tezos (XTZ) on its platform. These are the first tokens to be added in two years by the exchange.

BitMEX Launches Altcoin Futures

The cryptocurrency derivatives market has been flourishing this year, and the leading cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX has faced strong competition. Since the Black Swan event in March, BitMEX's BTC futures trading volume has steadily declined to fourth place. Even after more than five months, the situation has not improved, with the gap between BitMEX and the top three exchanges—Huobi, Binance, and OKEx—widening.

In order to enhance its market competitiveness, BitMEX, after a two-year hiatus, has decided to introduce altcoin futures contracts.

According to the latest announcement from the derivatives exchange BitMEX,the exchange will launch new contract products for EOS and Cardano (ADA) on September 10 at 4:00 pm, as well as list Chainlink (LINK) and Tezos (XTZ) futures contracts. BitMEX stated in the announcement:

“LINK will be the first DeFi-related asset on the BitMEX platform, and like XTZ, both are among the highest market cap and highest trading volume altcoins. This is the first step in providing our users with a broader and higher quality range of products. We plan to introduce more altcoin products in the coming months.”

First Token Addition in Two Years

The last time BitMEX introduced new tokens was in June 2018, when the platform listed futures contracts for the TRON/BTC trading pair. It is evident that BitMEX has gradually realized that today's derivatives market cannot rely solely on a few mainstream coins to attract more users.

It is worth noting that unlike other altcoin contracts, the new altcoin futures products (LINK, XTZ) will be based on USDT as the underlying currency. BitMEX stated in the announcement that this is because USDT accounts for over 60% of the overall altcoin trading volume, and thus, listing USDT trading pairs can provide its platform users with more demand-driven and intuitive trading products.