Tezos and Stellar have got the thumbs up for one of the major cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Bitfinex today announced it would allow users and investors to trade the two digital assets against both Bitcoin and US dollar, as well as to make deposits for the token.
The newly-listed pairs for margin trading include Tezos pairs (XTZ/USD), (XTZ/BTC) and Stellar pairs (XLM/USD), (XLM/BTC), which are traded with initial equity of 50 percent and a maximum of 2x Leverage .
The announcement also revealed that crypto options that can be held as collateral for margin trading were expanded to include XTZ, XLM, Cosmos (ATOM) and Ampleforth (AMPL), with a haircut of 50 percent.
Bitfinex further explains: “Previously, only margin-tradable crypto could be held as collateral for margin trading. With our new Risk Management system, we can allocate different levels of risk for different tokens. The maximum leverage or initial margin requirements can be adjusted according to the token's associated risk. As such, we are now able to add new non-margin crypto, in this instance ATOM and AMPL, to our stable of collateral currencies. More will be added in the near future.”
A busy year for Bitfinex
Bitfinex has had a busy year, fighting legal battles and media scrutiny about the stability of its stablecoin. The crypto platform and its affiliated stablecoin issuer Tether asked a US judge to dismiss the New York attorney general’s case against them, saying they did nothing wrong as they have never targeted investors in the state.
The US authorities have stepped up their enforcement against the crypto firms with the NY attorney investigating them for fraud because of duplicitous statements about the digital tokens’ backing. Specifically, Bitfinex is accused of using $700 million from Tether reserves to cover up losses of $850 million
The crypto exchange defended itself saying the money was deposited with a Panamanian-company called Crypto Capital but then was seized and safeguarded in several jurisdictions, including Poland, Portugal, the UK, and the United States, all through no fault of Bitfinex.
