Crypto Exchanges
By Pankaj K
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How the Weekend Pricing Actually Works. The tricky part is pricing. Standard FX markets shut down Friday evening and reopen Sunday night.
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Bybit and Kraken Already in the Room. Binance isn't first here. Not even close.
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Why Crypto Exchanges Want FX Exposure. The appeal of FX perpetuals for a crypto exchange is pretty clear.
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Binance is going after forex. The world's largest crypto exchange launched 24/7 perpetual futures on foreign exchange pairs Monday, starting with a USD-Brazilian real contract…
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The move is bigger than it sounds. The global FX market clocked an average daily OTC turnover of $9.6 trillion as of April 2025 — dwarfing crypto by orders of magnitude.
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The tricky part is pricing. Standard FX markets shut down Friday evening and reopen Sunday night. So what does a "price" even mean on a Saturday afternoon?
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Binance's answer is a dual-mode system. During normal FX trading hours, the contract price tracks a weighted index compiled from third-party data providers — pretty standard…
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It's a clever workaround, and probably the most interesting technical detail in the whole launch.
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The USDBRLUSDT contract — that's USD versus Brazilian real, settled in USDT — is the first one out of the gate. No word yet on which pairs come next or on what timeline.
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Bybit got there earlier, launching 24/7 perpetuals on major pairs including EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and USD/JPY.
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Read also: Payward Targets US-Regulated Perpetual Futures on Hyperliquid, Breaking New Ground
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So the competitive landscape already has shape. Bybit went broad on the major pairs. Kraken went cautious on leverage.
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What Binance has that neither Bybit nor Kraken can fully match right now is raw scale. More users, more liquidity, more brand recognition outside of Western markets.
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The appeal of FX perpetuals for a crypto exchange is pretty clear. Crypto traders already live with 24/7 markets, high leverage, and perpetual contracts — that's basically the…
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And the size of the prize matters. $9.6 trillion a day in traditional FX turnover is a number that makes even the largest crypto markets look small.
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