Arkham Intelligence is looking to launch its own crypto derivatives exchange next month, Bloomberg News reported on Oct. 11, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The news caused a 12% surge in the platform’s native token ARKM, which was already in an uptrend amid the wider market recovery.
As of press time, ARKM was trading at $1.51, up 16% over the past 24 hours.
Derivatives exchange
According to the Bloomberg report, Arkham intends to relocate its headquarters from London and New York to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where its new platform will be based. The firm is in the process of securing a free-trade zone license in the country, which provides tax and fiscal benefits.
Sources told the news outlet that the new derivatives exchange will focus on retail investors but will not be accessible to US customers. They also revealed that Arkham has been developing infrastructure over the past year for the exchange, which aims to rival established players like Binance, Bybit, and OKX.
The report also revealed that Arkham is currently seeking up to $100 million in funding from Middle Eastern investors to expand its reach.
Arkham is backed by venture capital funds such as Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and Bedrock Capital. Additionally, billionaires Peter Thiel and Tim Draper, as well as OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, took part in a $12 million funding round.
Volume behemoth
Arkham’s foray into derivatives aims to capitalize on the activity in the largest volume market in the crypto industry. Crypto futures and options have become extremely popular over the past few years to become a behemoth in terms of the volume processed each month.
The crypto perpetuals market moved nearly $3.5 trillion through centralized platforms in September, according to data from Coinglass.
The amount is nearly 25x higher than the trading volume registered by DEXs over the period and 3x the total $1.1 trillion in volume registered by the spot market across centralized and decentralized platforms.
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