Ripple leads $25 million round in Bitnomial as the derivatives exchange launches futures trading platform in US

Quick Take

  • Bitcoin derivatives exchange Bitnomial announced it has raised $25 million in a funding round led by Ripple.
  • Bitnomial also said it has launched a futures trading platform in the U.S. called Botanical.

Bitnomial, a crypto derivatives exchange, announced Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a funding round led by Ripple Labs, and also launched a perpetual futures trading platform in the United States.

The new platform, dubbed Botanical and currently in a closed beta, will give investors a way to trade perpetual futures, traditional futures and options, according to a statement.

"We are taking a bold step forward in our mission to provide a regulated and innovative trading experience by launching Botanical, which will provide an alternative to DEXes and VPN-based workarounds common in perpetual trading today," Bitnomial CEO Luke Hoersten said in a statement.

"Bitnomial's approach to bringing offshore trading models into the U.S. derivatives industry presents a significant market opportunity as they establish a compliant derivatives market for digital assets, such as XRP," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a statement.

The crypto derivatives firm will "leverage" Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin for the settlement of the perpetual futures, the statement said.

Tuesday's announcement follows Bitnomial's filing last week of a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which the startup alleged the agency had asserted the exchange’s yet-to-be-listed XRP Futures product violated federal securities laws. Whether XRP cryptocurrency is a financial security has been contested since the SEC accused Ripple in 2020 of raising $1.3 billion by selling the token as unregistered securities.

In 2020, Bitnomial was one of a few select U.S. businesses to gain approval from CFTC to manage a designated contracts market. That approval allowed Bitmonial to offer bitcoin futures and options.


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