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Since launching in 2017, LedgerX has cleared over 10 million options and swaps contracts.
I might be a complete dumbass, but why have I never heard of them? I'm particularly surprised at my ignorance that they've been doing this for years since there was so much hype over Bakkt, which offers similar options contracts if I'm not mistaken. Why was there so much anticipation about Bakkt's launch if LedgerX was around the whole time? Again, this is probably just my ignorance of derivatives trading. Is it because Bakkt was meant to cater to large institutional investors trading huge amounts of bitcoin, whereas LedgerX is smaller?
Also, their name is forever going to confuse me with the Ledger Nano X. There's no corporate connection, I assume?
Bad marketing and also for a long time LedgerX was only open to institutional traders and QCPs (essentially parties with more than $5m in assets)-- they're open to retail traders now (and for about a year?). No connection to Ledger that I'm aware of. I also found the Bakkt hype pretty mystifying-- LedgerX does a lot more options volume, and is by far the largest physically settled Bitcoin option market AFAIK (deribit claims more trades, but deribit is cash settled).
I've been doing business with them since 2017. ::shrugs::
Their fee structure for swaps (essentially buying/selling bitcoin) is much more sane than most of the US targeting exchanges, so I think everyone trading significant amounts should give them a look even if your interest isn't primarily derivatives. ... though also a lot of the price opinions I hear traders expressing would best be realized through options. Prior to LedgerX I wasn't aware of any platforms doing options that weren't extremely sketchy, so that alone would be a good reason that options trading isn't more commonplace for BTC traders.
Another reason you've might not have heard of them is that a lot of the hype in the cryptocurrency space is driven by paid/unpaid shills promoting altcoins. LedgerX has been Bitcoin only (though it seems likely that they'll add Ethereum soon). I have mixed feelings about that: I think any support for altcoins increases the risk profile of a service substantially (if nothing else, attention to the altcoin's trash fires distracts resources away from maintaining their Bitcoin integration), and we've seen a long history of "bitcoin exchanges" leaving their Bitcoin support extremely outdated and nearly unmaintained while continually investing in altcoin-dejure. But support for other cryptocurrencies might help bring in a lot more trading volume, which would make the platform more useful.
