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Starting on Monday, January 8, 2018, at 8:00 a.m. GMT, the ADA token from Cardano began to be listed on the futures exchange at BitMEX.

This makes BitMEX the fifth exchange to list the ADA token since Bittrex did so in October 2017, followed by Upbit, Binance and Coinnest.

Cardano, a project of IOHK, was designed by leading experts in academics and cryptography over the last couple years and draws from various features of existing cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum, but uses a proof-of-stake/security model as opposed to proof of work.

Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK, said: “As markets evolve, there is an increasing need for liquidity and more sophisticated trading strategies. I’m glad to see BitMEX list ADA and hope this continues to aid our march towards becoming the financial stack for the developing world.”

Cardano is a full blockchain, built from scratch in the functional programming language Haskell. At the heart of Cardano lies Ouroboros, a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Ouroboros comes with a mathematical proof of security that has undergone a rigorous peer review, resulting in its acceptance and presentation at the major cryptography conference Crypto 2017.

News broke last week that GRNET, the national research and education network of Greece, is working on a pilot project to verify student diplomas on Cardano, signifying a first official use case for the Cardano blockchain.

The chairman of the Cardano Foundation, Michael Parsons, said: “This new listing is indicative of Cardano becoming a truly global blockchain platform. We are excited to see Cardano list with BitMEX. Adoption of ADA by new trading platforms is reflective of the bright future that Cardano has as a leading blockchain platform.”

The BitMEX listing of ADA is a form of fixed-date contract that allows traders to speculate on the changing value of the ADA/XBT exchange rate with a leverage of up to 20 times. It is not required for traders to have ADA to trade the contract; it only requires bitcoin as a margin. Full details are available on the BitMEX site here.