Archive photo: Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, November 2023. Troutfarm27 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. The venue is not the location of the product launch.
Crypto.com and OG.com began rolling out cryptocurrency perpetual contracts for eligible U.S. traders Tuesday, adding a product that lets customers bet on rising or falling digital-asset prices without a scheduled expiration date.
The companies said the contracts offer leverage of up to five times a trader’s margin and will be available through the Crypto.com App and Exchange. The expansion brings a more complex form of crypto trading to retail app customers as well as institutional and advanced exchange users, with a different set of costs and risks from simply buying coins.
A price contract, not ownership of a coin
A perpetual contract follows the price of an underlying asset. It does not give the trader ownership of that asset, Crypto.com’s help center explains. A customer can take a position that gains when the price rises, or one that gains when it falls. Moving in the opposite direction produces a loss.
Unlike a futures contract with a fixed end date, a perpetual has no scheduled expiry. That does not mean a position can stay open regardless of losses. Crypto.com says a position remains open until the customer closes it or it is closed because its margin has been used.
The companies are offering around-the-clock trading and up to 5x leverage. Leverage means a smaller amount of posted margin supports a larger market position. It can increase gains when a trade goes the customer’s way, but it also magnifies losses when prices move against the position.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s investor guidance warns that leverage amplifies the risks of virtual-currency futures. A regulated trading venue does not eliminate the price risk of a volatile asset or make a leveraged position equivalent to holding cash.
How the U.S. rollout is structured
The announcement describes a CFTC-regulated trading framework. North American Derivatives Exchange Inc., affiliated with Crypto.com, operates under the OG.com Prediction Markets and Crypto.com Derivatives North America brands and is registered as a designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization, according to the companies.
Crypto.com said Foris DAX Inc. is registered with the National Futures Association as an introducing broker. The introducing broker connects customers to the derivatives trading infrastructure; it is a different role from the exchange and clearinghouse.
The rollout begins Tuesday across the app and exchange, but access is limited to eligible users in approved jurisdictions. The announcement did not provide a complete list of available tokens, state-by-state access or each contract’s margin and liquidation parameters.
Funding costs still apply
Crypto.com’s launch-offer help page says it is waiving trading fees on eligible perpetual contracts from October 27 through November 26. It also makes clear that standard funding payments still apply.
Those periodic payments pass between holders of long and short positions to help keep the contract’s price aligned with the underlying market. They are separate from trading fees, so a fee waiver is not the same as cost-free trading.
The companies also list take-profit and stop-loss orders and isolated margin among the product’s controls. Customers still need to check the specific contract terms and the amount of money exposed before opening a position. Tuesday’s change is broader U.S. access to leveraged, continuous crypto contracts, not a reduction in the underlying market’s risk.
JBizNews Desk | New York
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