The OKX crypto exchange, that completed its UAE registration in October 2024, is expanding its range of services in the region. On Monday, July 28, OKX announced the launch of its crypto derivatives service for small-scale retail investors in the UAE. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) will be supervising the deployment and response to this initiative as it starts allowing select platforms to bring advanced financial products to the country within a regulatory control.
The official handle of OKX MENA announced the development on X notifying the followers that derivates trading is being made available to all of the exchange’s users across the UAE.
“All UAE users now can trade futures, perpetuals, and options contracts with up to 5x leverage,” the post said.
Those looking to engage with derivatives trading in the UAE first need to verify themselves on OKX’s official website by providing details like location of residency and contact numbers.
Understanding derivatives trading
As explained by industry players like Kraken and Gemini alongside OKX, crypto derivatives are a category of financial instruments that derive their value from an underlaying asset, which could be a cryptocurrency, a stock, or a bond among others.
Traders engaging with derivatives trading essentially bet on whether the underlaying asset’s price would jump up or slip down — without having to actually purchase the asset. When crypto platforms like OKX offer leverages, they allow investors to control a larger portion of the bet by only investing a significantly small amount of capital.
While derivatives provide a slightly broader margin for traders to rope-in profits, they are highly volatile investment instruments and could lead to larger losses.
Owing to VARA’s involvement in OKX’s initiative, the exchange is offering tutorials and guidelines for traders of all categories — beginners as well as pros through its website.
Revisiting OKX’s recent developments
This year has emerged to be quite an action-packed one for the Seychelles-based crypto exchange.
Earlier in May, for instance, the exchange made its DEX aggregator platform live, featuring a “realtime abuse detecting and blocking system.”
Owing to the rising interest in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), the platform officials recently urged the Middle Eastern regions, especially the UAE, to explore the utility of digital tokens and step into the next era of investments.
Most recently, meanwhile, OKX entered into a partnership with USDC-issuer Circle looking to ramp up the liquidity for USDC conversions into USD and vice versa.