Such Token, Much Wow: BitMEX Launches Dogecoin Perpetual Contracts

Traders and high-volume crypto speculators can soon speculate on the future price of Dogecoin (DOGE), the meme crypto, at crypto exchange BitMEX starting February 5, it said in a release this morning.

The Hong Kong-based exchange was the first to introduce futures trading—financial contracts that allow traders to buy or sell assets at a predetermined price in the future—to crypto markets, transacting billions of dollars a day. Its charm (and trading volume) has, however, fizzled in the past few years due to newer competitors and even legal troubles against its founding team.

But Dogecoin’s a way to stay relevant. “In retrospect, it was inevitable. As the surge in interest in Dogecoin continues, we are launching a DOGEUSDT perpetual swap contract with up to 20x leverage,” the exchange said in its post, the opening a clear reference to Elon Musk's recent 'it was inevitable' tweet.

As a quanto contract, the Dogecoin product will be traded based on the underlying Bitcoin equivalent of the DOGE/Tether price pairing on other crypto exchanges. 

This means traders can either go long or short—profit by betting on the increase of prices or the decrease of prices, respectively—without actually holding either DOGE or Tether. Traders will either earn or lose Bitcoin as the DOGE/USDT rate on other crypto exchanges changes.

For BitMEX, listing Dogecoin helps it capture some of the $1.9 billion in cumulative trading volume that DOGE sees every day, much of it from competitors like Binance and OKEx (who list far more altcoins than BitMEX and attract more users).

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Meanwhile, the listing comes on the back of Dogecoin seeing a spike in its fame among celebrities, rappers, and even pornstars, who have touted thier DOGE purchases on social media in recent weeks. But it’s not going well for everyone.