Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX in 2019 and is its CEO.
FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX plans to list spot trading of Cardano, Polkadot and Avalanche in the coming months as the platform makes a concerted push to attract more retail investors.
“We’d like to list a lot of blockchains that are pretty significant,” the 29-year-old crypto billionaire told Insider last week.
“Polkadot is probably high on this list. I think Avalanche, I think Cardano is probably on this list. I think these are all blockchains we want.”
Bankman-Fried said that FTX, the fourth largest exchange by daily trading volume, is hoping to have more spot listings in the next month or two and that the focus is on adding the tokens to the international exchange.
The plan to let users buy and sell more tokens directly comes at a time when interest in so-called altcoins is increasing.
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Cardano is a blockchain created by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in 2017. Its cryptocurrency broke the $ 3 mark for the first time on Thursday and is now the third largest by market capitalization after Bitcoin and Ether.
Polkadot was also launched by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood in 2020. Avalanche is a decentralized financial blockchain and token that were also created last year.
FTX currently lists futures – products that allow investors to bet on the future price without actually owning the asset – in the Polkadot, Cardano and Avalanche cryptocurrencies. Futures trading currently makes up about 80% of FTX’s offering, compared to about 20% in spot trading.
The exchange is trying hard to attract more retailers as it is known for attracting institutional investors. FTX is now sponsoring the referees of Major League Baseball and bought the naming rights to the home stadium of the Miami Heat basketball team. It has also teamed up with soccer legend Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
“We are trying to expand the consumer base, especially in the US,” Bankman-Fried told Insider. “A lot of what we think is what we could do to plausibly reach tens of millions of potential users?”
U.S. consumers are currently banned from using FTX’s international exchanges, despite a report released in July by data firm Inca Digital said many Americans are circumventing such restrictions.
FTX’s US arm, called FTX.US, bought the LedgerX crypto derivatives platform this week to enable its American clients to trade futures.
Bankman-Fried also said that FTX is currently activating a broker-dealer license in the United States that could allow the exchange to list securities such as stocks.
