Filecoin stand-alone game on the exchange

Author | Asked

Editor | Wen Dao

Filecoin, which has not yet launched its mainnet, has created a hype market with a daily transaction volume of 300 million yuan, even though FIL tokens are in circulation. At least 30 exchanges offer FIL trading pairs, and the price of FIL has fluctuated among exchanges.

According to data from July 7, the largest price difference of FIL among the prices offered by 30 exchanges exceeded 270 yuan. Someone on Weibo commented that "Filecoin has now become a stand-alone toy on various trading platforms."

There are also irregularities in the labeling of FIL trading pairs in the market. Although it is often placed in the spot currency trading area, in fact, before FIL is generated on the main network, the FIL listed by the exchange can only be regarded as futures. Only 17 platforms have clarified the delivery cycle of FIL. Currently, there are FIL transactions with 3-month, 6-month, 12-month and 36-month cycles in the market, which are represented as FIL3, FIL6, FIL12 and FIL36 respectively.

What users who invest in FIL futures need to think about is whether the exchanges that provide futures will be able to redeem them as scheduled after the Filecoin mainnet goes online and FIL is mass-produced. In other words, where will the exchanges supply the demand for withdrawals at that time?

Honeycomb Finance found that among the 17 exchanges that offer FIL futures, 3 clearly stated that FIL came from early public and private investment; 3 claimed that they were supported by Filecoin mines or mining pools; 4 launched Filecoin computing power products in full swing to pave the way for future supply. The remaining 7 have not yet made clear the source of FIL when the FIL delivery period arrives.

"Filecoin has now become a stand-alone toy of various trading platforms. I want to see how these exchanges will end up if the mainnet can really be launched this year." On July 6, Weibo blogger "Those Things in the Coin Circle and Chain Circle" posted the FIL coin price information collected by Feixiaohao.

The Filecoin project is currently "marketable without currency". The blogger released two risk warnings in just one sentence: the "air" FIL on various exchanges presents different prices; when the Filecoin mainnet is launched, whether the real FIL coins produced can meet the withdrawal needs of trading users.

On July 7, according to the data collected by Feixiaohao, the index price of FIL was around US$17 on that day. At least 30 exchanges supported FIL's USDT trading pair. Among them, the FIL quotation on the Watt (WBF) Exchange was the highest, at US$61, and the lowest quotation on the Sprite Exchange was US$21. The price difference of US$40 was equivalent to RMB 280.

FIL has different quotes in different exchanges, with high price differences

Since the main network of Filecoin has not been officially launched, FIL is still in the air. For investors, FIL on various exchanges cannot be recharged or withdrawn. Without circulation, users are speculating on futures in a strict sense, and what they buy and sell is still a string of numbers. This has caused each exchange to form its own bidding market, and the same FIL presents different prices, which is exactly what the blogger mentioned above refers to as "stand-alone".

If we use the 24-hour trading volume as an indicator to get a glimpse of the activity of various FIL speculation markets, on Feixiaohao, the seven exchanges with FIL trading volumes of over 10 million account for 83.63% of the total trading volume of the currency. The first place in terms of trading volume is BiKi. As of 17:00 on July 7, the 24-hour trading volume of FIL on BiKi was 69.01 million yuan, accounting for 22.72% of the total trading volume; followed by an exchange called WanKeJia, reaching 42.3281 million yuan, accounting for 13.94% of the total; followed closely by gate.io, with 36.36 million yuan, accounting for 11.97% of the total trading volume.

A noteworthy phenomenon is that Huobi, Binance, and OKEx, the leading exchanges that are as famous as HBO, do not support FIL transactions. Although they are competitors, they have tacitly maintained a consensus on the launch of FIL and presented a cautious attitude.

Huobi and OKEx both mentioned the fact that Filecoin currently has no mainnet when responding to Fengchao Finance; Binance stated that any project listed on Binance has a very strict listing review process and due diligence analysis, and "all information is subject to official announcements." The cautious HBO shows that the leading exchanges strictly control project risks.

Among the 30 exchanges that support FIL transactions, 17 have made it clear that the currently launched FIL is a futures transaction with a lock-up period. Among them, the short delivery period is 3 months, the medium term is 6 months, the long term is 12 months, and some even provide 36-month FIL futures transactions.

These futures FILs are marked or described as FIL3, FIL6, FIL12, and FIL36. Different delivery cycles mean that users who buy and hold these futures will get the coins at different times after the Filecoin mainnet goes online. Taking FIL3 as an example, it means that within 3 months after the Filecoin mainnet goes online, users holding the futures can get the FIL coins redeemed by the platform.

Judging from the launch time, the time span of exchanges chasing Filecoin is nearly 3 years, which is also related to the repeated delays of Filecoin mainnet in the past three years. The first exchange to launch FIL futures was LBank. In 2017, the exchange provided ETH and BTC trading pairs for FIL for 6 months, 12 months and 36 months.

In the following years of 2018 and 2019, exchanges launched FIL futures. The most intensive launch period was of course from the end of June to the beginning of July this year. During this period, 10 platforms including gate.io, BitZ, BKEX, and CITEX launched FIL futures, showing considerable trading volume.

Behind the hot trading market, investors need to pay attention to one issue: when the Filecoin mainnet is launched, will the platform have enough FIL to redeem the futures products they provide? This requires finding out where exchanges get FIL coins for delivery.

List of FIL futures by exchange

After combing through the announcements of the 17 exchanges that explicitly provide FIL futures, Fengchao Finance found that, at present, only 6 exchanges have indicated the source of their FIL shares - CITEX has made public the information of their participation in the FIL public offering; gate.io has stated that the FIL on the platform comes from the shares invested by users of the Renrenico platform before "9.4"; FIL6 on BitZ comes from the shares invested by users of the Coinlist platform; BKEX, AEX and Wankejia exchanges all have Filecoin mining pools or mines to support delivery. From the data, the exchanges that have clarified the source of delivery have correspondingly higher FIL futures trading volumes.

Among the 17 companies, 4 have started to launch IPFS cloud computing power leasing after launching FIL futures, providing mining channels for interested users, which also makes these mining users likely to become the platform's currency deposit group to meet the currency withdrawal needs of other users. At the same time, these platforms can also obtain leasing service fees settled in FIL, further replenishing the FIL funding pool.

Except for these 10 exchanges that revealed the minimum guarantee of the coins, the remaining 7 exchanges including CoinW and WBF did not clarify the source of FIL delivery.

The price difference of stand-alone coins and the futures payment capacity of exchanges are all issues that investors need to consider. From mining machines, computing power to coin prices, the risk issues behind the hot Filecoin market cannot be ignored.