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Popular crypto exchange Coinbase has announced its plans to list Worldcoin (WLD) and Ordinals (ORDI) perpetual futures products starting April 11.
@CoinbaseIntExch will add support for Ordinals and Worldcoin perpetual futures on Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced. The opening of our ORDI-PERP and WLD-PERP markets will begin on or after 9:30am UTC on 11 APR 2024. pic.twitter.com/GYHPBTGBJG
— Coinbase International Exchange 🛡️ (@CoinbaseIntExch) April 4, 2024
The exchange, which provides institutional clients with access to over 30 perpetual futures and spot markets, will add these new perpetual futures contracts, also known as perpetual swaps. The Ordinals perpetual futures will trade under the ticker ORDI-PERP, while Worldcoin will trade under WLD-PERP.
Worldcoin, founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania in 2019, aims to become the world’s largest privacy-preserving human identity and financial network. Its native token, WLD, serves as a utility token with governance properties, allowing users to have a say in the future development of the protocol.
Ordinals: NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain
ORDI is a memecoin that runs on the Bitcoin protocol and the first token following the BRC-20 standard. The tokens in question have been created as Ordinals, an entirely on-chain implementation of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Perpetual futures, or perpetual swaps, are derivative financial instruments commonly traded on cryptocurrency exchanges. Unlike traditional futures contracts, perpetual futures do not have an expiration date, allowing traders to hold positions indefinitely as long as they maintain the required margin and meet exchange requirements. These contracts mimic the price of the underlying asset, typically a cryptocurrency, and settle periodically to the spot price.
To prevent significant deviations between the perpetual futures price and the spot price, exchanges use a funding mechanism. Funding payments are made between long and short positions to help maintain the perpetual futures price in line with the spot price.
Traders use perpetual futures for various purposes, including speculation, hedging, and arbitrage. However, it is crucial to note that trading perpetual futures carries significant risks, such as high volatility and the potential for liquidation if margin requirements are not maintained.
The announcement follows Bitcoin experiencing a significant surge on April 4, gaining over $4,000 in a single day as traders anticipated potential short liquidations. The cryptocurrency’s price reached a high of over $69,000, but as of press time is trading at $66,830 marking a 0.74% increase and pushing its market capitalization to $1.31 trillion.
Despite the recent gains and increased acceptance of cryptocurrency in finance, the bank’s chief investment officer, Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, stated that Bitcoin is not considered an investment asset class and that the bank does not believe in cryptocurrencies.
