Futures trading is one of the common trading activities in traditional financial markets, and it is no different when it comes to the cryptocurrency world as well. Currently, there are plenty of platforms that offer cryptocurrency futures trading options, and the leader among them by a huge margin is OKEx, which has managed to gain the tag of the world’s largest futures cryptocurrency exchange.

😱Crypto derivative market reported volume exceeds $20 billion in the wake of bitcoin price decline#bitcoin #btc $BTC #BItMEX pic.twitter.com/8seKkX52ZH

— CoinGecko | coingecko.eth (@coingecko) November 22, 2019

OKEx takes the top spot on Nov 22, 2019 – CoinGecko data

The platform’s claim for fame is further supported by a range of features offered to its customers. These features are designed to help them optimize their trading practices to place profitable trades while minimizing associated risks to an extent. In fact, the most recent crypto futures offering on OKEx is the USDT-Margined futures which went live earlier this month. Some of the salient features of this offering include 0.01-100x leverage, face value as less as 0.0001 BTC, Tice Size of 0.1, linear contracts and intuitive trading experience. The crypto futures contracts on OKEx also offer a lot of flexibility to the traders, thanks to the platform’s size, userbase, and support for an endless list of cryptocurrencies that can be paired against each other in various combinations.

According to company sources, most of the new features are introduced based on the inputs and feedback received from the community. This has led to numerous developments in the recent past, which have had a direct bearing on the usability, convenience, and profitability of traders. Earlier this year, OKEx shifted from weekly settlements (10 AM on Fridays) to daily settlements (10 AM every day) in CEST time. By doing so, the platform ensured that traders aren’t starved of their own funds for an entire week, which they can now use to open more trades.

In addition, OKEx has also put in a lot of thought into further improving the crypto futures trading platform. The Futures and Perpetual Swap Trading Market Data on the platform further empowers the traders by giving them access to crucial market information that can be used to predict and make better trading decisions. There are also plans to develop algo orders feature for futures trading as well as perpetual swap trading, another feature requested by OKEx customers. The launch of algo trading will open the doors for trade automation, enabling the users to place more orders on a timely basis based on market parameters predefined by them.

Enhanced Risk Management

There have been some other developments in the previous year which has enhanced the trading experience on OKEx to a large extent, as the platform successfully attempted to create a balance between users’ interest and market risks. In order to minimize the impact of sudden market fluctuations on traders and their open orders, the platform introduced few risk management features like Mark Price, Tiered Maintenance Margin Ratio (TMMR) System and Forced Partial Liquidation. Since the implementation of these features, there has been a significant improvement in the performance of the OKEx Futures market as the instances of early liquidation and clawbacks were almost reduced to zero.

The new risk management system proved itself after BTC crashed by over 20% from USD 7800 to USD 6100 in a span of 10 minutes following a huge 5000 BTC dump on BitMEX. In this situation, the system was able to stabilize the quarterly contract price at a price of USD 7000 with no clawbacks. The flash crash didn’t have much impact on OKEx’ futures trading price as the new Mark Price feature sets the cryptocurrency’s market price based on the current price on 5 major exchanges viz., Gemini, Coinbase, Bitstamp, Kraken, and OKCoin.

Chart: CoinGecko (Dec 2, 2019)

All these developments and superior service have definitely played a role in keeping OKEx ahead of its competitors, securing top places in the list of Top 5 platforms for crypto derivatives by trade volumes. By continuing the same path, the platform is expected to continue dominance in the near foreseeable future.