If you believe that you can predict the 2020 U.S. election, FTX, a leading cryptocurrency trading platform, has released an innovative product that can turn your political expertise into cash.
What do politics, traders and cryptocurrencies all have in common? If you answered that ‘none of them have been keeping their promises,’ you’d be wrong. Now let’s not get our hopes up. Politics hasn’t abruptly changed overnight, and even though a “political revolution” is supposedly underway, that is only according to an almost-80-year-old male candidate who has held office for the past 40 years—not exactly a ‘new face.’
In comparison, the supposedly complex world of crypto-trading is currently experiencing a real revolution; one that is led by a young and fresh entrant called FTX. Neither Democrat nor Republican, this crypto-derivative exchange platform has been attempting to render cryptocurrency trading both inclusive and accessible. Created in April 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with puffy hair and a keen eye for computers, FTX has, in less than a year, grown into of the leading candidates of the crypto-sphere. In a matter of months, the Hong Kong–based company started generating daily trade volumes that surpassed the billion-dollar mark; less time than it took Senator Amy Klobuchar to laboriously raise $15 million for her campaign.
FTX’s web portal (photo credit: FTX)
If the word crypto-trading inspires as much trust in you as the letters CNN do in the ears of Donald Trump, you wouldn't be alone. By and large, the realm of crypto-trading has the reputation of being reserved to both savvy institutional investors and nerdy computer geeks—the kind Brett Kavanaugh would have beaten up freely in high school.
Our ignorance of cryptos, and ultimately, of their potential, is ever-present in our political class. In July 2019, self-dubbed “America’s greatest president,” i.e. Donald Trump, utilized his favorite weapon of mass destruction, i.e. Twitter, to unleash a scathing attack against cryptos. These “unregulated assets,” he argued, were based on “thin air.”
The price of bitcoin rose for three straight days following his declarations. What the president’s fury truly revealed, however, was that cryptocurrencies were too often outside the public debate and struggled to be accepted, yet alone understood, by common people. Could you imagine Trump, for example, explaining, with his unique speaking style, how cryptocurrencies function?
“A lot of very smart people; great people, really great American people; are saying that cryptos are a complicated thing. Really complicated. First you got to have blockchain, but not any blockchain, it has to be crypto blockchain. You can’t just say that you have the same blockchain all over the place.… The crooked Dems think it sounds nice to say, ‘I have crypto blockchain; here’s what it is’… But you know…it won’t be crypto. They can’t get crypto done. They can’t get anything done. Sad.”
FTX’s 2020 U.S. Election Market: Crypto-Trading Made Easy
Luckily, FTX has been making crypto-trading as accessible as buying a box of bullets in Mike Pence’s local Indiana Guns & Ammo store. To do so, the company released an innovative, intuitive and lucrative product: the ‘2020 US Election’ market.
Similar to a prediction market, FTX’s 2020 U.S. Election allows people to trade on the outcome of the current presidential race. The trick is simple: Traders can choose from six contracts, each belonging to a presidential candidate, to turn their political expertise into a handsome profit. Each contract expires at $1 if said candidate wins the election, and $0 otherwise. “So if you think Trump has a 63 percent chance of winning, then his price should be $0.63,” explains Bankman-Fried. “Buying below that would be good, as would selling above.”
In comparison to conventional betting websites, FTX’s 2020 U.S. Election Market boasts a series of lucrative advantages. First, the company offers incredibly low fees, roughly amounting to 10 percent those of traditional platforms. Second, users can benefit from one of FTX’s core advantages: its substantial liquidity. In comparison to poker websites, which sometimes struggle to get funds in-and-out, FTX has, through its diversified offering, been able to create various avenues to pump liquidity into its ecosystem. Today, FTX accepts cryptocurrency transactions, including stablecoins and bitcoins, as well as traditional means of payment such as wire transfers and credit card remittances.
Hold the Trump card, Bernie your bridges, or Biden your time
Now, this is the kind of betting that casino-owning Trump could get into, and we all know who his money would be on. Favorite of the bookies, ‘the Donald’ is currently trading at a “tremendous” $0.594 on the FTX market, having dropped off from earlier highs of $0.63.
Trump is currently trading at $0.594 on FTX (photo credit: Shutterstock)
For people who follow American politics, FTX’s ‘2020 U.S. Election’ has offered relatively easy returns. For example, it didn't take a political expert to predict that Buttigieg, Warren and Klobuchar would eventually drop out of the race. Following his catastrophic debate performance, the same observation could have been made of former New Yorker Mayor Michael Bloomberg who, unfortunately for his wallet, had to spend a casual $500 million on campaign ads to realize that money doesn’t buy charisma.
“From a general perspective, markets are always too slow to react to long-term trends and too quick to react to weird, short-term events,” advises the FTX CEO.
With candidates dropping faster than the time it takes Nancy Pelosi to rip a State of the Union speech, the only ones left challenging the impeached leader of the free world are Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, two personalities that were the market’s favorite back when the primaries started. After a strong Super Tuesday performance, ‘Sleepy Joe’ has Biden-ed his time and is now running much closer to Trump, at $0.350.
Bernie and Biden are currently trading at $0.054 and $0.350 on FTX (photo credit: Shutterstock)
Bernie Sanders is currently well behind, trading at $0.054, and remains a serious underdog. While Democrats have argued that Bernie’s unorthodox style and policies limit his chances of victory, and have logically rallied behind Biden, it is important to keep in mind that the same observation was made about candidate Trump four years ago.
What is the point in common between politics, traders and cryptocurrencies? The answer is that FTX has been able to combine all three into a product that can turn your political expertise into profit. So if you think you have the answer to the outcome of the 2020 U.S. election mystery, it seems that now is the right time to bet on it.
For more information, visit: FTX.com
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