SBI FX Trade, the retail forex brokerage arm of Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings, has announced the listing of contracts for differences (CFDs) contracts for cryptocurrencies on its platform.
The platform is reportedly going to launch trading of CFDs in three different cryptocurrencies: bitcoin, ether, and XRP. These will be traded against the US dollar, and against the Japanese yen, making a total of six trading pairs.
The cryptocurrency CFDs are set to be start trading on Monday, August 31, and given the nature of the cryptocurrency space will be tradeable around the clock throughout the year. The CFDs will also be available on SBI FX Trade’s web and mobile interfaces.
The platform will have a minimum order limit of 0.0001 BTC, 1 XRP, and 0.001 ETH, and a maximum order capacity of 500 BTC, 10,000,000 XRP, and 10,000 ETH. Traders will be able to use leverage up to 2x, as this limit has been imposed by the country’s financial markets regulator to minimize risks associated with trading with margin in the cryptocurrency space.
Traders Won’t Own Underlying Crypto
It’s worth pointing out SBI FX Trade isn’t listing direct crypto-fiat trading pairs, but is listing contracts for difference. These CFDs offer traders a way to profit from the price movement of cryptoassets, without having to own them.
A CFD is essentially an agreement between the trader and the broker to exchange the difference in the value of a financial product between the opening and closure of the contract. Traders do not own the underlying asset, but profit from its price movements. They allow traders to long or short the cryptoassets.
SBI FX Trade is set to trade the CFDs without charging fees to open contracts, but will charge one if the open interest is held for over a business day.
The Japanese financial services giant SBI has long been involved in the cryptocurrency space. Earlier this year, it announced it was allowing shareholders to receive XRP as a benefit. Shareholders with 100 to 1,000 SBI shares were eligible to receive 2,000 yen in XRP (about $18), or a selection of health products.
Featured image via Unsplash.
