There are a lot of incentives to be had for actively trading during a bull market. Over and above those to be gained from correctly placing directional bets on Bitcoin, there are added bonuses to be had courtesy of the exchanges where the action unfolds.
Binance Futures, the world’s largest derivatives platform by volume, has just unveiled a double promotional offer to keep traders busy as January heats up. Last week, Binance Futures launched five perpetual markets whose margin is in USDC. Their introduction gives traders an alternative to USDT which has empirically dominated the derivatives market.
BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, and XRP markets are all now live on Binance Futures paired against USDC. To provide the impetus to get these maiden markets moving, Binance has allocated a total of $170,000 in USDC to reward those who deposit funds and get involved.
Two Promos That Work as One
The primary promotion that Binance Futures is offering this month takes the form of $125,000 in USDC to be shared between traders who are quick off the mark and deposit USDC into their futures wallet. The offer will run on a first-come, first-serve basis and there’s a strong chance that it will fill up fast.
While there are a few terms and conditions to adhere to, essentially you’ll qualify provided you deposit at least 100 USDC and keep it in your futures wallet for at least five days during the promotion. Users who deposit over 500 USDC will be eligible to earn a higher kickback in the form of a $15 trading fee rebate voucher awarded to the first 2,000 users.
The second promotion that Binance Futures has devised to celebrate its new USDC markets requires traders to do what they do best: trade. Anyone who trades at least 1,000 USDC on the exchange’s five new perps markets will be eligible for a share of 45,000 USDC.
Binance has devised a dynamic rewards pool which simply means that the maximum 45,000 USDC will be disbursed in the event of up to 6,000 traders qualifying. If the total number proves to be less, those who do qualify will share a smaller pool of USDC rewards.
USDC Gains Derivatives Market Share
Futures exchanges typically use either BTC or a stablecoin as their source of margin. Traditionally, USDT has been the go-to stablecoin for this purpose, but USDC has begun to make inroads here. While it’s not the largest stablecoin by capitalization, it still boasts a $25B market cap and its availability and liquidity make it ideally suited to margin trading.
Binance Futures will continue to offer a choice of perps markets, with both USDT and USDC available moving forward. At present, Binance Futures is pulling in around $60B in daily volume, 3x more than the closest competitor Bybit. Almost 350 markets are supported on Binance Futures, albeit many comprising alternative markets for a single asset such as BTC or ETH.
More than $1 trillion in bitcoin futures was traded throughout the crypto market in December and January is expected to surpass that total. In the event of a Bitcoin ETF being approved, spot and futures volumes should further increase, even though institutional funds will not be directly trading assets on traditional exchanges. The heightened interest in crypto assets will nevertheless drive an uptick in trading volumes across the board.