Forex and CFD broker, FXOpen, has quickly become one of the leading online financial firms to embrace digital currency trading. They initially entered the space through a partnership with BTC-e last year, providing that bitcoin exchange with trading technology and the ability to offer the MetaTrader 4 platform. Since then, they have created a B2B unit that among products offers liquidity for digital currencies as well as launching retail trading in bitcoins and other alt-coins. In addition, following BTC-e’s lead, FXOpen also released Chinese yuan (CNH) denominated bitcoin and litecoin trading among their list of tradable digital currencies.
Following up the launch of their retail offering, they have begun to integrate crypto currency trading among their marketing initiatives this month. Earlier this month FXOpen created an affiliate offering for crypto currency accounts. Similar to partnership plans for its forex and CFD products, the new affiliate program provides volume based rebates for referred accounts that begin to trade crypto currencies. Starting at 15% of commissions, depending on referred volumes, rebates can grow as high as 50%. For existing FXOpen partners, the new program provides an additional product to market to their customer bases, which specifically offers a tool to pitch to dormant leads.
Turning from their partners towards their retail customers, this week FXOpen announced the resumption of their forex article contest, which begins tomorrow, April 24th. In a new twist, FXOpen is focusing the contest on crypto currency trading, stating on their blog that “Considering the ever-growing interest of the Forex community in cryptocurrency trading that is observed in the market today, the organizers of the Forex Article contest wish to create a special environment for exchanging knowledge and experience in transacting in Bitcoins, Litecoins and other virtual currencies. This sharing of relevant trading articles will help make the competition become a knowledge base on cryptocurrency specifics, enabling any trader to obtain valuable information.” The contest is based on customers submitting trading related articles for FXOpen’s library of client information and strategies.
Overall, among brokers that FortuneZ has contacted about bitcoin trading, firms have reported to us that volumes remain subdued compared to activity of major forex and CFD instruments such as the EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, Gold and Oil. However, several firms such as eToro and Plus500 have stated that the product has been very useful in attracting new types of clients to their brokerage operations, with many seeing crypto currencies as a long term play. At FXOpen, their actions represent that they have made the plunge to go ‘all in’, elevating the offering’s importance to a level similar to that of their other trading products.
