Introduction to FTX Exchange and Battle Royale
Arguments for this article
Besides some writings about the Heikin Ashi candlesticks for The Birb Nest and how you could use them to your advantage, I haven’t done any public writings on Medium since i’m actively trading cryptocurrencies. This changes today with the post of this article about the relatively new derivatives exchange FTX and their trading competition “Battle Royale”.
To be clear; I write this article purely out of enthusiasm about the exchange and not because I got paid to do this. While writing this article I discovered a lot of arguments as to why I’m currently trading at FTX Exchange and why I will for probably the next months.
Introduction to FTX and their FTT token
This is not going to be an extended Fundamental Analysis, I will let that over to others. But in a nutshell, FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, who also happens to be the CEO of Alameda Research.
After I signed up just over two months ago, I quickly got lured in to their platform by the very slick UX. I was never a big margin trader on Bitmex, but when I traded there I almost got blinded by all the flickering stuff; and I think I read over a dozen articles on how to use the buy and sell feature on their site. FTX has a really clean design, which for some of you will feel very comfortable because they used the Google Design principles, giving you a user experience you know from using your Gmail or other products.
Not only that, but over the months they have been adding a lot of trading features to their platform. Nothing special right? Well, it is. Because they listen to their community first when adding for example trailing stop losses, or an updated profit & loss table. It’s therefore they really want to live up to their name FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, built by traders for traders.
One of the really cool things in my opinion, is that you’re able to chat with Sam, or their marketing employees via Twitter. They ask for feedback on CT, and they get it directly, which is very good for their product development team. Creating useful features that are actually desired, instead of building stuff only the CEO wants. Next thing Sam announced is to expect mobile apps for us traders, to serve your trading needs while you’re on the go.
Now it’s not only the UX or the coming features on their platform, it’s also about the products they offer to trade. Besides you could trade the usual suspects like BTC-Perp, EHT-Perp, LTC-Perp etc, they are also offering leveraged tokens. Now for example you could buy a ETH 3x Bull token, which basically gives you 3% returns if ETH price rises 1%, the other way around for the 3x Bear token. Now this week @SBF announced they will introduce 10x tokens and options. Next to very nice indexes they already offer like ALT-Perp or SHIT-Perp. This last is a basket of all your shitcoins, have you seen that elsewhere?
Like every other exchange, FTX has his own token which is called FTT. One of the use cases for this token is that you could use this as collateral for trading the derivatives markets instead of Bitcoin or USD stablecoins. The FTT token is not only tradable at their own exchange, but also on Huobi and Bitfinex.
What is Battle Royale?
FTX Battle Royale has been announced last week and is a trading competition organised by the exchange. Main reasons for this event is probably to attract more traders to their platform, pure marketing which is absolutely fine.
But I think it’s also a way of testing out the features FTX has to offer on their platform. The details of the competition will make this very clear. First some general information:
- Battle Royale will start 1 October 2019
- Traders need to have at least 1k FTT tokens in their Battle Royale subaccount
- There is a prize pool of $144k available, based on $1,20 FTT token value
So if you sign up for this, what is goal as a trader? Become the best trader of all signups basically! I quoted this from their website:
THE GLOBAL BATTLE
The FTX Battle Royale is a premiere global cryptocurrency derivatives trading competition designed to find the best traders in the world.
KNOCK-OUT TRADING
Traders compete during October 2019 in a knock-out style trading competition where the bottom 50% of traders get knocked out each week and the top traders win big prizes.
STAKE TRADERS
Using social E-Sports elements, fans of traders are able to support them by ‘staking’ their FTT with the trader to capture their PnL. The top 20 stakers win prizes each week.
BIG PRIZES
The total prize pool includes 120k FTT (~$144k USD with FTT at $1.20) and Sam’s Battlestation!
If you can’t beat them, join them!
Playing against guys like Smartcontracter, Bagsy, Smokey and Cold Blooded Shiller should be really fun. And hey, if you can’t beat them, join them! The competition lets you stake your FTT tokens on others. When the OG does a good job in trading and will be on top of the leader board, you will get rewarded for this too!Selected as partner
Now I’m happy to announce that FTX has selected me as one of their partners together with many other Crypto OG’s. I wouldn’t consider myself a OG while my account is relatively small compared to the competition.
Earn badges
To spice things up, you can earn badges and they have created a transparent leader board, to track your own score, or the score of the ones you staked and your competitors. Sounds good already?
Consider signing up via this referral link; which will give you a 5% discount on your trading fees.
I really like the approach FTX is taking here with this gamification. It’s a proven concept and it attracts youngsters like us. An idea I pitched already to their team is to let traders team up, so you could let compete paid groups with others. In my opinion, competitions like these could be the next big thing in trading. The aspect of a leader board is nothing new, but following the E-Sports I could see teams of traders play against each other.
For now this is a one player only competition, and you could earn for example the OG badge. This one you get when buying the 1000$ worth of FTT tokens as your ‘buy-in’.
Stake on h0dl2100k
My approach for competing in this challenge?
Trading as I always do, using my Heikin Ashi candles together with Ichimoku for trading with the trend, especially for the higher time frames.
Besides that, I’m going to do some daily scalps with a new technique I learned this year from my competition Cold Blooded Shiller. I will compete him with his own Renko strategy, which lets me spot clear horizontal support and resistance areas very clearly. On top of that, AO and RSI will tell me when bull or bear divs are building.
My focus will be on the leveraged tokens for example 3x Bull or 3x Bear tokens. I will consider writing a next article about these tokens and how to play them.
Now if you enjoyed this article, start signing up for the competition and stake some FTT tokens on me! Remember that I will keep on updating the FTT chart on my Twitter account. Oh and leave a clap clap!
Useful links
FTX Exchange sign up for Battle Royale
Hodl2100k is a contributor at The Birb Nest. The Birb Nest is a trading community simultaneously serving hundreds of clients with a team of thoroughly examined and tested Nest Team members with proven technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and IT expertise.
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