Coinbase International set to list ORDI and WLD perpetual futures

Coinbase’s institutional client-facing subsidiary has revealed plans to list perpetual future contracts for the BRC-20 token Ordinals and Worldcoin on April 11.

In an April 5 X post, Coinbase International Exchange said that it would list perpetual futures products for ORDI and WLD as early as April 11, making them available to institutional investors on both Coinbase International and Coinbase Advanced.

ORDI and WLD have seen significant price movement and trading volume in recent months.

Worldcoin quickly became one of the top coins for crypto investors seeking exposure to the AI business, rising from $2.20 on Feb. 7 to as high as $11.70 on March 10, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Worldcoin aims to become the world’s largest privacy-preserving human identification and financial network, granting ownership to everybody. Worldcoin was founded by Sam Altman, Max Novendstern, and Alex Blania in 2019. Its native token, WLD, is designed as a utility token with governance qualities, allowing users to influence the protocol’s future direction.

ORDI skyrocketed 1,640% from $5 on Nov. 1, 2023, to a high of $87 on March 5, as a frenzy for Ordinals-related assets began late last year.

ORDI is a cryptocurrency based on the Bitcoin protocol that offers text and images as NFTs and tokens. The Ordinals protocol writes information to each Satoshi, including text, images, audio, and video; the majority of ORDI tokens have been airdropped to users.

The announcement on April 5 is part of a wave of new perpetual futures contracts being introduced to the international arm of Coinbase, an institutional-targeted exchange.

Perpetual futures, also known as perpetual swaps or perpetuals, are a type of derivative contract that allows traders to bet on an asset’s future price without a defined expiration date. The regulatory approval process for futures contracts is dependent on the product being sold.

On April 4, Coinbase International Exchange implemented futures contracts for Wormhole’s native W (W) coin, which was released alongside a $850 million airdrop to early cross-chain bridge users.

Meanwhile, on March 21, Coinbase secretly announced plans to market futures contracts for both Litecoin and the memecoin Dogecoin, claiming that it had transcended its origins as an online joke and had established itself as a viable digital currency.

Notably, Coinbase stated that it would use the “self-certification” method to launch futures contracts before gaining official clearance from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as long as they adhered to the agency’s regulatory rules.