Ankex, a new cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that was developed within the crypto custody tech company Qredo, will be overseen by Michael Moro, the former CEO of Genesis Trading.
Ankex will start with perpetual futures contracts in international markets this week as it begins alpha testing. With the use of features known to experienced traders, such a central limit order book, the platform will let users maintain decentralized custody of their assets.
An immediate response was to promote the advantages of decentralized finance (DeFi) in the wake of the failure of FTX and other centralized crypto-trading platforms. Many institutions, however, who are used to a low latency, high speed matching environment, do not find the trading experience under DeFi to be suitable.
The central limit order book, rapid matching, and other features that provide a better trading experience are now standard, according to Moro, who stated this in a recent interview “The old model of custody, trading, and settlement all in a box is done,” he added. Therefore, “we started building a really fast matching engine that is off chain, to marry that with Qredo’s on-chain custody in terms of MPC [multi-party computation] technology, and get the best of both worlds.”
The exchange will integrate Metamask and Fireblocks after three months of alpha testing, according to Moro, so that any non-custodial wallet can connect and trade. Ankex is a different business from Qredo, he added.
Ankex, which has approximately 17,000 people eager to test it, is in the process of obtaining a British Virgin Islands registration and license, according to Moro. He added that it intended to be governed in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates.
Three separate contracts—Binance coin (BNB), ether (ETH), and plain vanilla perpetual futures—will be handled by Ankex in the initial stage. During testing, only USDC will be accepted as collateral, according to Moro.
We don’t want this to become a full-fledged leverage casino, in terms of leverage. Therefore, the maximum leverage we are offering for Bitcoin is 20x, whereas only 10x is offered for ETH and BNB, according to Moro. But of course, it would be a dull exchange if we simply traded BNB, ETH, and bitcoin. Additionally, we will have to provide derivatives on less popular and lower market cap coins.