The currently traded BCHZ18 futures contract started trading on 28th Septemeber, with a final contract settlement scheduled for 28th December. The contract trades BCH against BTC pair with a maximum possible leverage of 20x.
On 10th November, Bitmex came out with an ‘endorsement’ to the ABC side of the chain by stating, “On settlement, the BCHZ18 contract will settle at a price on the Bitcoin ABC side of any split and will NOT include the value of Bitcoin SV”.
Jumping the gun
It does seem that Bitmex jumped the gun on this one. At the time of the announcement, most other large cryptos exchanges had refrained from taking sides and instead only gave updates about the disruption to deposits and withdrawals for BCH at the time of the fork – rather than pick a side.
Crypto Twitter commentator, Rhett Creighton, pointed out that, “Bitmex BCH futures can go to ZERO. That’s because they are actually BCH ABC futures as of Nov 9th. Someone could even spend $1M for 1 hour of hashrate just to make it look like SV will win”.
Bitcoin SV just flipped Bitcoin ABC on the Poloniex "futures" market.
Hashrate and price are now higher for Bitcoin SV. pic.twitter.com/cpIAt1p5UW— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) November 14, 2018
This morning Whalepanda pointed out that “Bitcoin SV just flipped Bitcoin ABC on the Poloniex ‘futures’ market. Hashrate and price are now higher for Bitcoin SV”.
This is an extremely worrying sign for Bitmex regardless of the fact that the approach is consistent with Bitcoin Cash initially splitting off from Bitcoin in August 2017.
If SV wins then Bitmex’s BCH contract will trade towards zero.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. We do not give advice on financial products.