FTX Exchange Review [2020] – The Complete Beginner’s Guide

FTX.com is an institutional-grade cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, established in May 2019 and based in Hong Kong. Built ‘by traders, for traders’, FTX has made its mark with several industry-first derivatives products. 

In the short time since its launch, FTX has consistently been in the top-5 crypto derivatives exchanges by volume and has been given great reviews online. Our staff at Blokt personally use it and are big fans of it.

FTX is quickly becoming a favorite among professional crypto derivatives traders and retail traders alike.  Blokt has also ranked it highly in our best cryptocurrency exchange guide.

So, what makes the FTX.com derivatives platform such a trusted and professional exchange? We’re going to find out in this complete FTX.com exchange review, and also show you how to get started opening an account, placing a trade, and walk you through the different types of derivatives contracts FTX.com offers. 

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But first, we’re going to look at FTX’s history, and explore some of the different features available on FTX.com. 

FTX Exchange Development

FTX.com was originally incubated and developed by Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm established in 2017, who manage a $100 million portfolio of digital assets and are one of the top market makers for BitMEX, OKEx, and other derivatives exchanges. 

Alameda Research was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, previously a professional trader for Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk; and Gary Wang, an ex-Google developer. Together, they formed a highly professional team of trading and crypto experts who helped to create the FTX platform. 

Gaining notoriety for their advanced trading products and industry-first derivatives contracts, FTX.com really began to stand out from the rest of the crypto derivatives market in August 2019, when it was announced that they had raised $8 million in funding from several serious institutional venture capital companies. 

In February, FTX announced that it would be holding a fund-raising round through an equity-backed token sale, where investors could buy FTX_Equity tokens, with a minimum buy-in of $250,000 – or 125,000 FTX_Equity tokens. In total, FTX valued themselves at $1 billion through the token sale. 

Strategic Partnership With Binance

In December 2019, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance invested a large sum into FTX, in a bid to own a large equity stake in FTX.com. Although the final sum was undisclosed, the multi-million dollar deal is a testament to the quality of the FTX.com platform and trading infrastructure. 

In a press release, FTX stated that the investment by Binance was the first outside investment directly into Alameda Research, and the two teams would be working closely together to build better trading products and develop more robust exchange platforms. 

Speaking to Coindesk in December, Changpeng Zhao, known as ‘CZ’ in the…