Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in FTX

Sep 27, 2022 261 0

Deposits and Withdrawals

Fees

There are no fees on deposits and withdrawals, except for ETH, ERC-20 tokens, or small BTC withdrawals. FTX users will pay the blockchain fees for all ETH, ERC20 tokens unless they have FTT staked.

Note: For free withdrawals, however, in the case of a user whose fiat/stablecoin deposit/withdrawal volume exceeds their trading volume, we reserve the right to charge a withdrawal fee of up to 0.10%. We will reach out to any users affected before applying this.

Small BTC withdrawal fees: BTC withdrawals 0.01 BTC are free. BTC withdrawals

Deposit Speed

Blockchain confirmation(s):

Token	Confirmation(s) Required
BTC	2
LTC	2
BCH	2
ETH	10
USDT (ERC20)	10
XRP	1
EOS	1
BNB	1

**We do not accept Tron smart-contract deposits.

Withdrawal Speed

FTX aims to process withdrawals promptly. Most withdrawals are processed within a few minutes. Larger withdrawals can require manual review and take up to a few hours.

Note that withdrawals of stablecoins can be limited by their creation and redemption speeds. For larger withdrawals this can take up to 6 hours on weekdays and up to one day on weekends.

Note: FTX will disable your withdrawals for the next 24h whenever:

You change your FTX account email
You disable/ reset your 2fa
You reset your password

USD Stablecoins

USD, USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD all count as "USD Stablecoin" balances. Depositing any of those to your FTX wallet will credit you 1:1 with USD Stablecoins. Please note that PAXG has a 0.02% on-chain transaction fee.

You can withdraw USD Stablecoins 1:1 as any of USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD with no conversion fee and no blockchain fee if you have 150ftt staked, otherwise you would be subject to blockchain fees for erc20 withdrawals. You can also transfer it to FTXs otc portal.

USDT

USDT can be deposited or withdrawn as either ERC20, TRC20 or SPL. You can find all your USDT deposit addresses in your wallet. FTX will automatically detect which chain you are withdrawing USDT on based on the address you are sending it to.

Wrong Address or Chain

FTX is not responsible if you send deposits or withdrawals to an incorrect address. If you are withdrawing from FTX to an incorrect address, there is nothing FTX can do to recover the tokens. If you deposit to an incorrect FTX address, we can attempt to recover it, but may charge a fee to do so, and if we do not generally support the deposited token or method we may be unable to recover it at all.

The chain that a crypto deposit is sent on is really important. If deposits are sent on the wrong chain we may attempt to recover it but this is in no way guaranteed. A minimum 5% fee will be charged but in many cases we will either not be able to recover the unsupported token or will require a significantly higher fee.

Wrong Coin

FTX is not responsible if you send deposits of a coin that FTX does not list. If you deposit a coin that FTX does not support, even if it is on a chain that FTX does support, we may not be able to recover the coin and may not support returning it to you at all. If we are able to recover it and send it back to you, doing so will incur a significantly higher (than 5%).

ETH deposits

FTX does automatically credit smart contract ETH deposits, although smart contract ETH deposits do take longer, there may be a 24 hour delay from when the deposit has 10 confirmations to when it will be credited to your account. Standard ETH blockchain transfers will be credited immediately after 10 confirmations.

Spot Margin trading

What assets are available for borrowing/lending?

You can find the current list on the borrow and lending pages. Most but not all spot assets available for deposit and withdrawal on FTX can be borrowed. As of November 2020, the borrowable assets will soon be those which have both spot markets and perpetual or quarterly futures, and aren’t stocks.

How does margin work for borrowing?

Your spot margin positions are cross-margined with your futures positions; there is no separate spot margin requirement you have to monitor.

Generally the way that futures margin works is that each contract has a margin requirement (initial margin fraction to open a position and maintenance margin fraction to avoid liquidation), and you need a total collateral value which meets those thresholds.

Spot margin is similar. The position size of a spot margin position is the notional size of any short (negative) balances you have. So for instance if you have + $65,000; -2 BTC; and BTC is trading at $15,000, then your position size from spot is $30,000 (2 BTC * $15,000 per BTC). This is treated the same as if you had a $30,000 futures position on, and requires initial margin to increase and maintenance margin to avoid liquidation.

In general, if a spot token has a collateral weight of W, it has an initial margin requirement of [(1.1/W)-1]. So, for instance, if it has a collateral weight of 1, then its IMF is 10%; and if its collateral weight is 0.6, then its IMF is around 0.83. The maintenance margin is [(1.03/W)-1]. (The auto-close margin--the point at which you are not just liquidated but in fact closed down off-exchange--is 50% of the maintenance margin requirement.) This means that you can open positions up to 10x leverage and will get liquidated around 33x leverage if all of the relevant tokens have a collateral weight of 1.

For large positions, initial margin requirement = max(1.1/W - 1, IMF factor * sqrt(position size in tokens)) and maintenance margin requirement = max(1.03/W - 1, 0.6 * IMF factor * sqrt(position size in tokens)).

Note that, in addition to requiring margin, negative spot positions also decrease your account collateral value. Your account’s total collateral is the sum over all spot tokens of:

1. If token quantity is positive

Token quantity * token mark price * min(collateral weight, 1.1 / (1 + imf factor * sqrt(token quantity)))

2. If token quantity is negative

Token quantity * token mark price

So if you have +2 BTC, -1 ETH; BTC is worth $15,000; ETH is worth $500; BTC’s collateral ratio is 0.975; and ETH’s collateral ratio is 0.95; then your account’s collateral is:

BTC:
1. Quantity: 2
2. Mark price: $15,000
3. Collateral ratio: 0.975
4. Value: $29,250
ETH:
1. Quantity: -1
2. Mark price: $500
3. Collateral ratio: doesn’t matter
4. Value: -$500
Total collateral:
1. $28,750
Margin required:
1. Position size: $500
2. Initial margin required: (1.1/0.95-1)*500 = $79
3. Maintenance margin required: $42
4. Auto-close margin required: $21

So the short ETH position both requires collateral, and decreases your total account value (and thus total account collateral).

This is the same collateral number that futures use! So say that you instead had: +2 BTC, -1 ETH, -3 BTC-PERP (short)

BTC:
1. Quantity: 2
2. Mark price: $15,000
3. Collateral ratio: 0.975
4. Value: $29,250
ETH:
1. Quantity: -1
2. Mark price: $500
3. Collateral ratio: doesn’t matter
4. Value: -$500
BTC-PERP
1. Quantity: 3
2. Mark price: $15,000
3. Collateral ratio: doesn’t matter
4. Required initial margin: 5%
Total collateral:
1. $28,750
Margin required:
1. Position size: $500 + $45,000
2. Initial margin required:
  1. ETH: (1.1/0.95-1)* $500 = $79
  2. BTC-PERP: 5% * $45,000 = $2,250
  3. Total: $2,329
3. Maintenance margin required:
  1. ETH: 0.3*79 = $42
  2. BTC-PERP: 3% * $45,000 = $1,350
  3. Total: $1,392

Stocks

Borrowing and lending stocks works identically to everything else, except that they all have a IMF of 20%. The max leverage you can achieve if exclusively borrowing stocks is 5x.

Interest rates

Every hour, lenders are paid and borrowers are charged. This is determined as follows:

All lenders specify a minimum borrow rate they must receive for that hour.
At the beginning of the hour, we calculate the total borrow demand for each coin between all users.
We have an auction: we sort the lending offers by minimum rate, and take the cheapest set that satisfies the borrow demand. The borrow rate is set to the minimum borrow rate of the marginal (most expensive) loan that was required.
1. For example, say that:
  1. Alice: wants to borrow 2 BTC
  2. Bob: wants to borrow 3 BTC
  3. Charlie: lending 1 BTC, min 0.01%
  4. Denise: lending 10 BTC, min 0.03%
2. Then:
  1. Total borrow demand is 5 BTC.
  2. This borrows Charlie’s BTC and 4 of Denises
  3. The marginal loan is Denises 4 BTC loaned out at 0.03% minimum
  4. So all 5 BTC of borrows -- including the one against Charlie -- use an interest rate of 0.03%
FTX charges borrowers an additional fee; for borrowers, its already baked into the rates they see. See below for an explanation on how these are calculated.
The interest rates are generally quoted in % per day (e.g. 0.05%/day); 1/24th of that is paid out on the hour.

You can monitor the borrow rates youre paying.

So this means the following:

All borrow rates only last for one hour; each hour, they’re re-determined.
Every borrower pays the same rate for an hour/coin; and every lender who does in fact lend their tokens receives the same interest rate for an hour/coin.
When you open up a borrow mid-hour, you end up paying for that hour’s interest rate at the end during the auction.
Note that you will be charged interest on your borrows whether theyre held on FTX, withdrawn, pending withdrawal, sold, or anything else.

Open orders

Note that, by default, placing an offer to sell 1 BTC/USD spot if you don’t have any BTC would require borrowing it and paying interest even if the order wasn’t yet filled, because it could require delivery at any point were it to be filled.

However, the first $300,000 worth of open orders that would require a borrow per account instead do not need to pay for a borrow in the asset unless/until they’re filled.

Lending

To lend an asset out, you specify the quantity you want to lend, and the minimum interest rate you’d require. If this loan ends up being borrowed (i.e. your interest rate is below the marginal rate), you will receive the marginal interest rate hourly. By default your specified parameters (amount to try to lend, minimum interest rate) will persist from hour to hour. Lenders bear no counterparty risk: FTX guarantees interest payments for however long your funds are borrowed, even if the borrower gets liquidated.

Assets that you are lending are effectively locked, and cannot be withdrawn/sold/used as collateral/staked/etc. However, they can be used as maintenance margin to prevent liquidations.

If you choose to stop lending your coins and they were in fact being borrowed, you will stop earning interest on them at the end of the hour and they will be unlocked in 1 hours. If you were offering to lend your coins but they were not actually borrowed (because there was not sufficient demand at your minimum interest rate), you are free to use the coins and stop trying to lend at any point.

You can manage your loans at ftx.com/spot-margin/lending.

Fees

FTX charges a fee on interest payments made. Outside of that, there are no fees beyond the typical FTX trading fees. The net fee on loans is already built into the interest rates you see (so lenders and borrowers see slightly different rates); there is no fee on top of that.

Details on how borrow rate is calculated:
Borrow rate = (lending rate) * ( 1 + borrower’s spot margin borrow rate)
Borrower’s spot margin borrow rate = min(500 * borrower’s taker fee, 1)

Note: if funds are borrowed and withdrawn from the account the expected borrow rate for the next hour will be applied to the withdrawn funds

Documents

This post outlines the basics of the FTX spot margin system. It is not the only relevant resource, and may be overridden by other sources. Eligible parties may be asked to sign other documents in some cases, including but not limited to the FTX Institutional Customer Margin and Line of Credit Agreement. As always, FTX reserves the right to final interpretation of its products.

Risk

FTXs risk engine will attempt to liquidate any users before they could get negative net account balance; using spot margin opens you up to liquidation risk. In general, FTX and its backstop fund will attempt to protect other users against other accounts bankruptcy risk.

FTX may impose margin position limits or decreasing collateral on large positions of illiquid coins.

Futures Trading

What are the futures?

FTX lists futures on many coins including BTC, ETH, EOS, XRP, and USDT. Each coin has three futures: a contract that expire this quarter, a contract that expires next quarter, and a perpetual future.

What makes FTX futures different from other futures?

The futures listed on FTX differ from other major cryptocurrency futures in the following ways:

FTX futures are stablecoin settled: you deposit stablecoins as collateral for all of the futures, and your PNL is settled in stablecoins. This means that you get legitimate USD-based price exposure and settlement, without needing a bank account; you can also use the same base currency as collateral for all of the contracts, making it easy to shift your positions around.
FTX futures have a unique backstop liquidity provider program which jumps in to provide to accounts in danger of bankruptcy, helping to avoid clawbacks.
FTX futures have careful, measured margin calls to avoid large price dislocations.

How do the quarterly futures expire?

The quarterly futures expire to a TWAP of their associated index on the last Friday of every quarter between 2am and 3am UTC.

If you hold an expiring futures position, you will be credited with USD PNL equal to the expiration price shortly after.

What is a perpetual future?

Perpetual futures dont expire. Instead, every hour, each perpetual contract has a funding payment where longs pay shorts equal to [1 hour TWAP of Premium] / 24. This helps to keep the price of the perpetual futures in line with the price of the underlying index without ever closing down positions for expiration.

How do I post collateral?

Collateral for the futures is in stablecoins. The current set of accepted stablecoins is USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD.

To deposit or withdraw collateral, go to your wallet page and deposit either USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD. Depositing either will credit your account with USD, which is automatically used as collateral for all of your futures trades.

By default all margin is posted in USD in your wallet. USD can be funded by depositing USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD.

Balances of the following coins also count towards collateral:

Coin	Weight (total)	Weight (initial)
Non-USD fiat	0.99	0.98
USDT	0.975	0.95
BTC	0.975	0.95
ETH	0.95	0.9
BNB	0.95	0.9
PAXG	0.95	0.9
XAUT	0.95	0.9
KNC	0.95	0.9
BCH	0.9	0.85
LTC	0.9	0.85
TRYB	0.9	0.85
LINK	0.9	0.85
TRX	0.9	0.85
CUSDT	0.9	0.85
XRP	0.9	0.85
SOL	0.9	0.85
BVOL	0.85	0.8
IBVOL	0.85	0.8
OKB	0.85	0.8
HT	0.85	0.8
MKR	0.8	0.8
SUSHI	0.8	0.8
SNX	0.8	0.8
YFI	0.8	0.8
SXP	0.8	0.8
BTMX	0.8	0.8
OMG	0.8	0.8
TOMO	0.8	0.8
AAVE	0.8	0.8
OKB	0.85	0.8
HT	0.85	0.8
MATIC	0.8	0.8
LEO	0.85	0.8
Tokenized Stocks (e.g. AAPL, TSLA, etc.)	0.85	0.8
SRM	0.9	0.85
FTT (optional)	0.95	0.95

By default all positions use the same collateral pool, and all USD, non-USD fiat, and above cryptocurrencies in your wallet count as collateral. Each subaccount has one central collateral wallet and uses cross margining for the account. Each subaccount has separate margin and collateral from other subaccounts.

If you want to use isolated margin create a subaccount for that position and move in collateral.

How can I determine my liquidation risk?

There are two ways to determine when your account would get liquidated.

#1: Estimated Liquidation Price

If you go to any market page there will be an informational box on the right hand side. You can find an Estimated liquidation price there; if you dont have any other positions on then your position will start to get liquidated if the futures price gets there.

#2: Maintenance Margin Requirement

Once again look at the informational box on the right hand side. You can also find your current amount of leverage used there, and your current margin fraction, which is just 1/leverage. Your account will begin to get liquidated if your margin fraction drops below the maintenance margin requirement, also displayed in the box. Maintenance margin fraction starts at 3% and increases with position size, so you will begin to get liquidated if your account gets to ~33x leverage (or less depending on position size).

In the example above the user has a margin fraction of 8%:

Position size = 1 BTC * 10,406.25 $/BTC = $10,406

Total collateral = $808.73

Margin fraction = 808.73/10406.25 = 8%.

They will get liquidated if their margin drops down to the maintenance margin requirement of 4%. That means theyll get liquidated if markets move 8% - 4% = 4% down.

Note that we try to liquidate accounts slowly, and we will stop if your accounts margin fraction gets above maintenance, so we might only have to liquidate part of your position.

If you are worried about liquidations and dont want to actively manage your margin, consider trading leveraged tokens; they allow 3x leverage and automatically rebalance to avoid liquidations.