KuCoin will launch a monthly Bitcoin futures product “in a few weeks” according to founder and CEO Michael Gan, as they seek to increase their foothold in the futures market. KuMex, KuCoin’s futures trading platform, will host the new product in addition to their existing futures trading options, although more detail on the new venture has not yet been forthcoming.
#KuMEX is going to launch the Bitcoin Monthly Contracts product in a few weeks.
Read more about this news ???https://t.co/yQZnIguH4g— KuMEX (@KuMEX_Official) October 17, 2019
Announcement Falls Flat thanks to Lack of Details
Gan announced KuCoin’s plans at the Blockchain Life 2019 Forum in Moscow, Russia, with KuCoin releasing a Medium article the following day to support the announcement. Given that Gan failed to say much about the product at the talk, attention turned to the Medium article, which contains all of one sentence on the forthcoming futures product before launching into a glorified advert for the KuMex platform itself. In fact, we learn more about the new languages that KuMex will soon add than the new product they will soon be supporting. Hopefully more details will be announced as the launch approaches, but as teasers go it was pretty underwhelming.
KuCoin Does Something Before Binance!
KuCoin have, to many observers, spent much of the past year or so copying what Binance does a few weeks later and generally worse. In March 2019, at a time when IEOs weren’t standard practice for every money-grabbing exchange under the sun, KuCoin announced Spotlight, a direct copy of Binance Launchpad down to some of the text in the documentation, further taking a leaf (or the whole tree) out of CZ’s book when they announced a change to a lottery-based allocation just weeks after Binance did the same. Given that KuCoin announced KuMex just three days after Binance Futures was announced it was likely they already had it in the works, and the addition of a monthly Bitcoin futures trading product shows them, for the first time, taking the lead on something. Perhaps this time round Binance will copy KuCoin, although it wouldn’t be the first time Binance themselves would be accused of this...
