Perpetual Futures completely changed the way derivative trading work and we have Arthur Hayes and BitMEX team to thank for that. Cryptosphere has a tradition of being a light year ahead of traditional finance. You can read this Substack article to learn more about the origins of Perps. Currently most of the cryptocurrency trading volume on centralized exchanges happen in the form of Perps. Thus the upside and downside are both put on steroids while creating liquidation risks for the trader. There are few other things such as funding rates to worry about.
More Trading Leads To More Fees
There are some traders who have only traded Perps. Then there are others who are simply too uninterested in the low volatility of Spot trading. HIVE has multiple DEX Interfaces to deal with Spot trading (including Automated Market Maker). Take a look at these statistics to get an idea on how much we could be potentially missing out on in terms of trading volume.
CEX Trading Volume
DEX Trading Volume
Get 5 ACE To Test Your Trades
When I got started with PredictIt I managed to get 15 ACE to trade. You can read all about it in this article. Since I am already familiar with the interface, I could jump in and become eligible for the 5 ACE bonus. This is eligible for 50 traders. There were 47 spots available when I started trading.
ACE is the stablecoin of ecosystem. It is currently below peg. Creation of more features and utility for ACE should eventually help with the demand and price returning to peg. It is very difficult to create and maintain a decentralized stablecoin. All of this brings in more value and to the $LEO ecosystem and creates more demand. The current troubles are primarily caused by the terrible market conditions in the cryptosphere where almost everything has crashed severly. Only $BTC managed to have a half decent bull run in 2025 and even those gains are negated once you factor in the expansion of M2 (money supply).
Quick Tutorial
First visit the Perps Page in Tools and connect your wallet. I highly recommend using the
extension for your HIVE activities.
Deposit your funds to trade. You can use the same funds for prediction market activities. I prefer to simply buy ACE on HIVE-Engine or Tribaldex and deposit ACE directly. $HIVE and $HBD deposit is available.
- Select a Long/Short position along with leverage. 2X leverage is selected as the default. Apart from Market orders, Limit orders are also available which allow to enter a position when the price hit a predetermined level.
- Close your position when you are at profit or when you fear a liquidation. It is better to walk away with some of your ACE rather than have it liquidated completely.
- (Optional) Add Margin to save yourself from potential liquidations. You cannot use this ACE for any other activity until the position is closed. You get better safety for a reduction in capital efficiency and opportunity cost.
Important Factors To Know
- Prices are derived from Hive-Engine diesel pool reserve ratios (harder to manipulate that orderbook).
- Prices are sampled every 15 seconds from diesel pools and Time Weighted Average Price (TWAP) smooths these samples over a 15 minute window.
- If your margin ratio (checked every 30 seconds) falls below the maintenance margin rate (5%), the position is liquidated.
- On liquidation, 5% of remaining margin goes to the protocol treasury and the rest is returned to the trader.
- Positions have a 5 minute minimum hold time to prevent flash loan style attacks.
- Minimum collateral is 0.10 ACE.
- Maximum leverage is 5X.
- The AMM has built-in risk controls including circuit breakers, inventory skew adjustments, and drawdown pauses.