FTX Increases Trump Futures Margins Before the Election, Biden Futures Lead by 64%


FTX Increases Trump Futures Margins Before the Election, Biden Futures Lead by 64%

At the beginning of the year, the trading platform FTX Exchange launched a futures market so people can bet on the U.S. election and created a futures contract token called TRUMP. On Friday, FTX revealed that the exchange is lifting the initial margin requirements to $0.50 for its TRUMP token contracts.

Individuals who don’t live in the United States can participate in betting on the U.S. 2020 presidential election by leveraging the trading platform FTX. News.Bitcoin.com reported on FTX launching its TRUMP token futures contracts back in February, as our newsdesk disclosed a number of other betting portals that use digital currencies to bet on the upcoming election.

At the time, gambling sites and FTX’s TRUMP futures had shown Donald Trump was expected to win the 2020 election. However, on September 30, our newsdesk’s latest report had shown Joe Biden was leading across gambling portals by at least 60%.

On Friday, FTX announced some changes to the original TRUMP token futures market and the exchange is also offering a BIDEN futures market as well. FTX said:

[FTX Exchange will] increase [the] initial margin requirement to $0.50, so you need $0.50 to get short 1 TRUMP or $0.36 (the current price of TRUMP) to get long 1 TRUMP.

FTX Increases Trump Futures Margins Before the Election, Biden Futures Lead by 64%
Screenshot of FTX Exchange’s TRUMP futures token on Friday, October 30, 2020.

Looking at both futures markets on FTX shows that traders are expecting Joe Biden to win the U.S. election and percentages are over 60% today. BIDEN futures tokens are swapping at prices between $0.62 to $0.64 (64% chance of winning) at the time of publication. Meanwhile, TRUMP tokens are swapping at prices between $0.34 to $0.38 (38% chance of winning) a unit, which means current support for a Donald Trump win is lagging.

As stated during the original FTX TRUMP futures announcement, “[TRUMP] is a futures contract on FTX, [The token] expires to $1 if Donald Trump wins the 2020 U.S. presidential general election, and $0 otherwise.” The latest announcement also notes that FTX is increasing the “maintenance margin requirement to $0.40 – $0.10” until the election as well.

On Friday, October 30, a great number of polls say that Joe Biden is leading the race. However, reports also show that Trump may actually be in the lead in the United States election polls.

“A handful of contrarian pollsters believe Trump’s support is underrepresented and that election analysts could be headed for another embarrassing miss on election day,” Jonathan Easley from The Hill wrote on Friday.

What do you think about FTX Exchange lifting the initial margin requirements to $0.50 for TRUMP contracts? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

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