Is Lisk's official web wallet trolling you, not letting you connect? Well there's a list of nodes who are running the wallet which you also can connect to: 
http://40.68.214.86:8000

repace the ip's below in that. It sounds shady, but it works. 
       
            {
                "ip": "13.70.207.248",
                "port": 8000
            },
            {
                "ip": "13.89.42.130",
                "port": 8000
            },
            {
                "ip": "52.160.98.183",
                "port": 8000
            },
            {
                "ip": "40.121.84.254",
                "port": 8000
            }

The new CryptoFacilities Turbo contracts have taken the bitcoin trading community by storm. The London-based bitcoin futures exchange has FCA regulation and recently collaborated with CME, so they're a trusted name in the space. While other exchanges offer high leverage with profit clawbacks and waiting period to withdraw profits, CryptoFacilities allows you max 50x leverage trading with no clawbacks! Your profit is available to withdraw instantly. 

Visit the generic CryptoFacilities walkthrough we have to get started with setting up your account and depositing. Here we will go over the specific Turbo product and how you can trade safely with high leverage. Start by going to the "Account" section of the site to fund your Turbo account:

Clicking the "Transfer" link will give you this popup, where you can transfer coin from your Cash or Futures account into Turbo:

Once you have funded your Turbo account, go to the "Trading" section of the site to open the actual trading platform:
​

If you already are trading on CryptoFacilities then you will find this familiar. That's because The Turbo Futures are identical to the Futures (normal ones), just with higher leverage. Notice on the left in the picture above, the orderbook of the contract you have selected. You can click the Weekly or Biweekly Turbo Futures after clicking the Tab "Turbo Futures". This will allow you then to execute MKT (market), LMT (limit) and STP (stop limit) orders.

Each contract on CryptoFacilities is worth 1 Bitcoin. As an example, I'm going to go SHORT 2 Contracts (2 BTC), and on the right you can see the Initial Margin Buy and Sell requirements. For the Sell it shows 0.041 BTC. That means I am able to short 2 BTC worth of bitcoin with only 0.041 BTC. That's about 50x leverage.

Note: If you are already in a position, the Initial Margin on the right side will show as 0 BTC, because it won't cost you any margin to exit a position. If you are short and have, say, a -1 Contract position, then you just Buy 1 contract in the market to close out your position.

Back to the trading: you can make it a market or a limit order, I decided to press "Market" and then sell the 2 contracts -- REMEMBER YOU DO NOT NEED TO "OWN" FUTURES CONTRACTS TO SELL THEM SHORT! You are just taking one side of the contract and putting up margin to be short. See the main futures guide to learn these basics if you're confused.

You can see in the Trade History the 2 contract sell got filled and now I have a position short in the Turbo Futures on biweekly. This means now I have a -2 Contracts Position on May16-W5 turbo contract. In order to close out this position, I would need to Buy 2 Contracts to go flat. In this case, I would hope for the price to go down, then look in the orderbook for a nice place to buy and get a positive profit. 

If I went LONG and was +2 Contracts Position, I would just need to SELL 2 contracts in order to close out my position and capture any profit (or loss). You can go long just as easily as you can go short on BTCUSD using CryptoFacilities bitcoin futures contracts. All it requires is bitcoin to put in margin, and the exchange manages the risk well with liquidations and termination to avoid any social loss clawback of profits.

This is how easy it is. You can monitor your PNL under "account" and then "Margin Accounts". Click "Bitcoin Futures" or "Bitcoin Turbos" to show either summary and you will get an overview of what your liquidation and termination thresholds are too:

That's really how simple it is to trade Turbo 50x leverage BTCUSD contracts on CryptoFacilities. You can transfer more bitcoin into your Turbo account if you want to use less leverage than 50x. So if you put 0.1 BTC in there and trade 2 contracts, you will be at about 20-25x leverage rather than 50x, which is maybe more what you're used to at a site like OKCoin.

Enjoy trading on CryptoFacilities with NO clawbacks, no waiting for withdrawing your profits, and not being worried about any shadiness because they are properly audited and have FCA regulatory recognition.

Get $10 in Bitcoin when you sign up and make your first trade using this link. 

Bitcoin derivatives exchange BitMEX has made another strategic pivot recently by announcing they were going to stop issuing new futures contracts and instead focus on new swap products which pay (and deduct) interest from users who are short (or long). Perhaps most importantly: the contract never expires, so you are never forced out of your position because of any settlement.

They started by releasing the ETHBTC and have now swept their product offering of futures with this new swap product. There's a lot of confusion surrounding this new product, but it can be quite simple once you understand a few financial principles. Patiently read through this article if you would like to understand why there's a premium, and what the Bitfinex BTC and USD rates have to do with the price of futures and the behavior of the BitMEX XBTUSD swap.

In financial theory, it's quite simple how this is done. The future value of BTC/USD is merely the realisation of what a creditworthy individual can do by borrowing USD to invest in BTC. You can play with our Fair Price calculator here to see how different rates affect the theoretical equilibrium value of BTCUSD in the future.

In our post on Why Bitcoin Futures Tend to Trade at a Premium to Spot, we went briefly into the Covered Interest Parity and how this is a major indicator of the proper futures rate because it shows the arbitrage condition. Let's revisit this concept in a different light to understand the BitMEX swap product XBTUSD.

In practice there are frictions in the market. You can't fluidly go to Bitfinex and borrow BTC in order to sell it for USD, which you then use to lend out at a higher rate than you borrow BTC. This requires collateral, which defeats the purpose, and fees and other costs make this less easy too. However, in a well adjusted and efficient market, this is how the prices are governed, so try to keep an open mind and understand the theory behind it without getting too autistic about the practical details.

Just like in our infographic above, we make the same assumptions, BTC/USD = $500, USD borrow and lending rate is 0.05% per day at Bitfinex, and BTC rate is 0.01%. Let's say then that the futures price for a weekly contract settling in 7 days was the same price, $500. An arbitrageur sees this price and thinks, wait, can't I borrow BTC at 0.01% and just sell them for USD and lend out at 5x the rate at 0.05% and earn a return? He would earn each of those rates every day for 7 days, paying 0.07% in bitcoin and earning 0.35% in USD. In his mind, $500 is a bargain because he can actually really make:

1.0035/1.007 * 500 = $501.4

Just by earning the interest differential. This incentivizes him to then buy the $500 future because he can synthesize the value of bitcoin in 7 days in the financing market and sell at $501.4.

This market pressure through arbitrage leads eventually to the market price of the 7-day BTCUSD future to converge to this Covered Interest Parity price.

The prior section was just a refresher on how the BTC and USD financing markets affect the price of futures contracts, which themselves represent the future value of Bitcoin in USD. Now, turning back to BitMEX's swap product, which is a "Perpetual Swap", what difference is there between buying XBTUSD and holding it for 7 days, and buying a BTCUSD futures contract expiring in 7 days? In theory, there is no difference, both are just different ways to arrive at the future value of Bitcoin in USD. 

With this in mind, we look at the BitMEX XBT swap contract specifications:

Remember that BitMEX is a pure-bitcoin site, so you are only depositing and trading with BTC as collateral. However, each contract on XBTUSD represents $1 in value. Just like their futures contracts, every contract has a customer as counterparty who is on the LONG and the SHORT side.

Each day at 12:00 UTC, the long holders of XBTUSD pay the USD lending rate, and receive the BTC rate. The short holders of XBTUSD receive the USD lending rate and pay the BTC rate. The example in our infographic is USD rate (0.05%) - BTC rate (0.01%) = net financing rate 0.04%.

You might be wondering: hey, why would anyone stay long if they know they are going to pay this stupid daily rate? Why not just sell it 1 hour before and avoid it? The answer is: it is more expensive to do this because you will pay a 0.075% fee to do a taker sell in order to get out. This means that nobody who is rational will be offering you the ability to get out and profit from missing the payment that a long holder has to have. Similarly for those who want to make a quick short interest payout, they can't simply short at a market price that will be above spot, allowing them to earn the interest without any cost. 

The closer to this 12:00 UTC daily payment, the more the market discount will be to reflect this inability for long or short holders to arbitrage and get a free lunch from this.

Following through with the infographic example and the futures example, let's show what the value of BTCUSD looks like in BitMEX's product.

Assuming the same parameters: 0.05% USD rate, 0.01% BTC rate. Going long at XBTUSD at spot $500 and holding for 7 days results in:

$500*(1+(0.0005-0.0001)*7)=$501.4

This value is identical to that which is seen in the theoretical equilibrium price in prior section for 7-day future price of bitcoin.

Here's what the orderbook looks like trading XBTUSD. It will be identical to what you're used to if you've traded at BitMEX futures contracts, you have the number of contracts, the price, and it's that simple, long and it goes up makes you profit, short and it goes down and you make profit.

This means that when you are trading between Friday evening and next Friday morning, your profits in trading XBTUSD will not be able to be withdrawn until the PNL is settled and any DPE is restarted. This is a minor disadvantage to being able to trade with 100x leverage on a product which essentially tracks spot. 

The new XBTUSD swap product from BitMEX is a unique and innovative way for traders to speculate on the future value of bitcoin. It has benefits above futures contracts in that they do not expire. When the net financing rate difference between USD and BTC is positive, short holders will earn a daily interest rate payout. If the net financing rate is negative (which is not likely to happen) then long holders would earn daily interest.

One potential downside to this is that while the leverage you access is interest-free, if you're a longholder you will pay financing charges in order to compensate the shortholders for the financing differential in the synthesis explained earlier in this article. However, this is in effect the same as if you were going long on a futures contract at a premium, the difference is that the interest in the swap you pay over time, while the interest in the future is baked into the price.

Don't be scared of the BitMEX XBTUSD swaps. They are really just futures by a different name: you use them in order to speculate on changes in price and you can even earn interest while trading too!

Sign up for BitMEX and get started trading now, get 10% discount on fees.

Bart Chilton, former head hancho at the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, the US organisation responsible for regulating derivatives trading, has written an op-ed that every bitcoin traders should read.

In it, he compares bitcoin to the internet, and warns that the US is falling behind Europe and others in being permissive toward innovation:

What follows in his op-ed is a stunning pro-cryptocurrency argument, focused on Bitcoin, and how all the state and federal licensing and regulations needs to be reduced to accommodate it.

His final paragraph is unambiguous in its support for paving the way for bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general:

This is incredibly bullish for bitcoin in the US, where currently it's not possible to legally trade bitcoin derivatives, which is a rapidly growing industry with multiple players introducing interesting and useful products.