News from coinbase: about to launch perpetual futures of Worldcoin and Ordinals

The international division of the popular exchange Coinbase has announced its intention to list perpetual futures associated with Worldcoin and Ordinals starting from April 11th. The Coinbase International Exchange entity is gearing up to expand its already extensive offering of crypto-derived investment vehicles for professional investors outside the USA. The product lineup includes over 30 perpetual futures and spot markets, and now perpetual futures, also known as perpetual swaps, will be added to the list. These are a particular type of derivatives linked to the performance of an asset. Coinbase International Exchange is preparing to add new futures to its listing. With a post on X, formerly Twitter, Coinbase International Exchange announced that new futures will be available in the listing from April 11th. The derivatives associated with the crypto ORDI and WLD will also be available on the listing of the affiliate Coinbase Advanced. Both divisions operate outside the United States, only in certain specific countries, and target an audience of institutional investors. The perpetual futures will be associated with the performance of ORDI, quoted under the ticker ORDI-PERP, and Worldcoin, with the abbreviation WLD-PERP.

This is not the first time that the well-known international exchange has listed future contracts linked to the performance of the most popular cryptos; last March 21st, Litecoin and Dogecoin were listed. In announcing the new investment vehicle, the company reiterated how the meme coin has "outgrown its origins" from being an online joke to becoming a legitimate digital asset. For the launch of the new future contracts, Coinbase explained that it will use the "self-certification" option that will allow bypassing the approval waiting times from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This possibility is granted provided that the guidelines established by the supervisory authority are followed.

The WLD Token

The Worldcoin project is one of the most ambitious in the crypto landscape. The goal of founder Sam Altman, the same as OpenAI and ChatGPT, is to transform it into the world's largest financial and online identity verification network. Founded by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania in 2019, Worldcoin has been at the center of international debate due to privacy protection issues. It remains one of the most interesting successes in the market; in the last year, the price has gone from $2.19 on February 7th, 2023, to peak at $11.7 on March 23rd. Today, it is trading down at $6.79 according to CoinGecko data. The native token WLD has its utility and is also a governance tool, giving voting power to its holders in defining the project's future. Although not directly involved, many investors consider Worldcoin a tool to gain exposure to the artificial intelligence sector given Altman's track record. So far, the token's price performance has been influenced by developments at OpenAI.

The ORDI Token

ORDI is a cryptocurrency that operates on the Bitcoin blockchain and was born following the launch of Ordinals, the NFTs issued on the BTC network. In practice, like the non-fungible tokens issued on Ethereum, Ordinals also have unique and non-replicable characteristics, containing text and image information. The Ordinals protocol allows creating tokens with BRC20 standards and writes information on each Satoshi, which can be text, images, audio, and video. Although ORDI is a BRC20 token, it is not directly affiliated with those who developed the Ordinal technology to bring NFTs to Bitcoin. The fact remains that it benefits the most from the close association. Most ORDI tokens were distributed to current holders through airdrops. ORDI's value has grown by 1,640% from its launch in November to the record set on March 5th. The price started at $5 on November 1st and then reached $87 in March, riding the wave of enthusiasm for tokens in Ordinal format mounted at the end of last year.

What are Perpetual Futures Contracts?

Perpetual futures, also known as perpetual swaps or perpetual contracts, are a type of derivative financial instrument commonly traded on crypto exchanges. Unlike traditional futures, perpetual futures do not have an expiration date. This allows traders to maintain their positions indefinitely, as long as they maintain the required margin and meet other trading requirements. Perpetual futures mimic the price of the underlying asset, usually a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, and settle periodically based on the actual price of the asset to which they are linked. Traders use perpetual futures for various purposes, mostly as a speculative tool to profit from price fluctuations, but also as a hedging and arbitrage tool. These products are intended for a professional audience as they involve a very high level of risk.