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FTX Exchange Pays Users’ Gas Fees Out of Own Pocket

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After unprecedented trading volumes and some network congestion, the FTX exchange introduced special measures to boost trader confidence.


FTX Exchange Compensates Traders for ETH Congestion

The rising gas fees for Ethereum (ETH) meant traders faced potential difficulties withdrawing funds. The exchange also showed lagging transactions for tokens, potentially leading to losses. For that reason, FTX stepped in to take the load off traders.

“In view of the serious congestion of the Ethereum blockchain yesterday, FTX paid for itself, increased the gas (miner fee) packaged by ERC20 for all users, and accelerated the speed of user withdrawals,” the exchange announced.

Gas fees reached $0.30 for speedy transactions, nowhere near the peak ETH fees. However, the fees were 10 times higher on average, meaning some wallets may have chosen to pay exorbitant fees. At one point, average reported fees per transaction reached $1.20.

Waiting times also meant those that chose low fees faced delays that may be costly in terms of delayed smart contract execution and liquidations.

Competition Heats Up With Other Derivative Markets

During peak trading times, the FTX exchange also had to lower the frequency of trades and avoid trading congestion. So far, the increased trading load managed to create problems even for the biggest markets, with outages caused by panic selling. FTX, which aims to become a leading crypto derivatives exchange, now carries as much as $3.4 billion per 24 hours. BTC futures take up the bulk of trading, or 45% of all volumes, with $1.5 billion per day reported volumes. ETH trading is also derivative, contributing another 12% to volumes.

FTX Token (FTT), the native asset of the exchange, also recently rallied to as high as $2.78. During the latest sell-off, FTX sank to $2.03, still closer to the top of its range. The FTX exchange noted the asset had remained relatively stable despite the overall sell-off of nearly 30% for most assets.

Still, FTX exchange, along with BitMEX, were singled out as possibly exacerbating the problems with the recent BTC price drop. FTX, despite its claims to high capacity, had to delay orders, essentially also creating a sort of emergency switch for BTC trades.

FTX still takes up about 2.13% of overall BTC futures trading, still far behind BitMEX. With the current sentiment still leaning toward extreme fear, BTC is not yet recovering with any stability, as more selling is expected.

Do you think crypto exchanges should cover their customer’s high gas fees? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!


Images via Shutterstock, Twitter @BullishKid





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Ethereum

Crypto enthusiasts could make $122K per year mining Ethereum with this setup

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Simon Byrne has taken at-home crypto mining to a whole new level as he looks to capitalize on Ethereum’s (ETH) enormous price potential. 

As first reported by Anthony Garreffa, Byrne has set up an ETH mining rig consisting of 78 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. Although the RTX 3080 is marketed toward high-end PC gamers, crypto miners are using these powerful specs to enhance their capabilities.

With each card using roughly 300W of power, Byrne’s setup uses 23.4KW of energy. And that doesn’t even factor in associated costs like AC. All said, his electricity bill is estimated to run up to around $2,166 per month.

The RTX 3080 launched in September at a price of $699, but supply shortages have caused the per-unit cost to swell to $1,199. At the shortage price, that’s a price tag of $93,522 for Byrne’s setup.

Still, these costs could be offset by the operation’s mining capability. One GeForce RTX 3080 graphic card has a hash rate of around 83MH/s using Ethash, which should generate roughly 0.22236870 ETH per month, according to Garreffa. All 78 cards would therefore generate 17.3 ETH per month, which is equivalent to around $12,352 at today’s prices.

Stripping away the electricity costs, that’s roughly $10,200 per month or $122,000 per year. And that’s not factoring in Ethereum’s price potential during the next bull market.

Ether’s price zipped past $700 over the weekend, the first such move since mid-2018. The return of altseason, as some have predicted, could send ETH’s price even higher over the medium term as investors cycle from Bitcoin to other large-cap cryptocurrencies.