How to Trade at FTX for Beginners

How to Register at FTX

How to Register a FTX Account【PC】

As a first-time ftx.com customer, you will want to follow the steps below to create an account.

Go to ftx.com, Click "REGISTER".

Enter your email and new password,

Click on the box to agree to the Terms of Service and then click on "Sign Up".

Your account is now created but unverified.

FTX has three different tiers of KYC requirements. Please see below for a summary of the levels:

Tier	Requirements	Limits
unverified	Email	No ability to trade, deposit, or withdraw; just to explore the site.
1	Email Full Legal Name Date of Birth Country of residence and region/province Check for restricted jurisdictions Phone jurisdiction	2000 USD daily
2	Full Legal name Date of birth Address Proof of Address / phone jurisdiction Description of source assets Passport or other similar government issued identification Facial verification	Unlimited crypto and fiat withdrawals

To continue the account application, choose "Verification Type", choose whether this is for an Individual or Institutional account.

Enter your KYC information and click Submit Information.

In the next page, you will see that you have passed the level 1 kyc process and now you are on level 2 identification verification.

When you are finished with filling out the blanks, you will need to take a picture of your identity document, this process is to protect you from identity theft

Click "Start" in the start verification section and it will start the first step of this process

Once you are done with this process, your level 2 verificaiton is finished.

It will take some time to get approved for this level. However, your kyc application will get almost instant approval if you have submitted your documents right, setting up kyc is quicker and simpler than you think.

How to Register a FTX Account【APP】

1. Open the FTX app on Android or iOS to get started. Tap "Register" to go to Registration page

2. You’ll be asked for the following information and click "Register"

1. Email address
2. Password
3. Referral Code (you can request an invitation code from the one who invited you and fill it in. If no invitation code is available, it’s ok to leave it blank.)
4. Tap on the box to agree to the Terms of Service

3. Slide to complete the puzzle.

Complete the rest of the registration process following the instructions to activate your account.

How to Install FTX APP on Mobile Devices (iOS/Android)

iPhone

Method 1: App Store

The FTX app is now available in the App Store! You can find it here.

Also note that the FTX app is not available in the Chinese App Store.


Method 2: Download on Safari

1) open up ftx.com on Safari. If you use any other browser this will not work.

2) Click on the square with the arrow

3) Click on "Add to Home Screen"

4) Open the FTX app on your home screen

Android

Method 1: Google Play store

You can find the FTX Android app on the Google Play store here.


Method 2: Download from Chrome

If you downloaded the app before 2019-10-03, please delete it and download it again.

1) go to ftx.com on your phones Chrome browser. If you use any other browser this will not work.

2) Press the Chrome menu button (the three dots in the upper right hand corner)

3) Select "Add to Home Screen"

4) Open the FTX app on your home screen


Method 3: download the APK

You can find the Android app file here (note this link will download the file).

This QR code is the same as the APK download link above:

What Are Subaccounts

Each subaccount on FTX has independent balances, margin, and positions, and can trade independently. Subaccounts are useful for isolating positions, margin, or access.

You can create, delete, and edit subaccounts at ftx.com/subaccounts.

You can also transfer any funds between subaccounts instantly there.

Note that if you do a withdrawal from your wallet to any other FTX account--including one of your other subaccounts--itll be processed instantly off-chain.

How to Verify Account in FTX

How to Verify Identity【PC】

Go to home page: https://ftx.com, Log in or Register.

Click "Settings".

Click "Identity Verification".

Choose "Verification Type", choose whether this is for an Individual or Institutional account.

Enter your KYC information and click Submit Information.

In the next page, you will see that you have passed the level 1 kyc process and now you are on level 2 identification verification.

When you are finished with filling out the blanks, you will need to take a picture of your identity document, this process is to protect you from identity theft.

Click "Start" in the start verification section and it will start the first step of this process.

Once you are done with this process, your level 2 verificaiton is finished.

It will take some time to get approved for this level. However, your kyc application will get almost instant approval if you have submitted your documents right, setting up kyc is quicker and simpler than you think.

**FTX has recently engaged with Chainalysis to monitor suspicious cryptocurrency transaction alerts in the Chainalysis Know Your Transaction (KYT) product, the real-time anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution for monitoring cryptocurrency transactions. It is the first compliance alerts solution available across 15 cryptocurrencies. By monitoring our transactions in the Chainalysis KYT, FTX is able to receive real-time alerts to help their business mitigate exposure to regulatory and repetitional risk. Their system will help our compliance teams focus on the most urgent activity and enforce compliance policies while better allocating resources

How to Verify Identity【APP】

Open the FTX app on Android or iOS to get started. Login your account to FTX.

Tap "User" icon below.

Select "Enable trading and deposits" at Identity Verification. Go to the FTX document verification page.

Follow the Instruction to upload your ID document.

Once the steps are completed, the identity verification process is completed.

How to Deposit at FTX

How to Deposit Crypto

First you will need to log into your account on the FTX website. Once you are in, go to your wallet.

On this page you can see the balances for all the coin you have. We are going to use the stablecoins usdc as an example. Click "DEPOSIT".

Then click "DEPOSIT USDC".

You can only send USDC to this address, you may lose your deposit if you send any other coins.

Three are three addresses for you to choose, you can either scan qr code or copy and paste the address to the platform you are trying to deposit crypto. If someone else is sending you cryptos, you can also give them these addresses for deposit, make sure that you use the right address for the right token for the right chain.

How to Deposit Fiat

Go to "MARKETS", click on "FIAT" then click on the "DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW FIAT" button.

This will bring you to a page of all the fiat currencies that FTX accepts.

We are depositing USD as an example. Click on "DEPOSIT" button in "USD and Stablecoins".

Then click on "DEPOSIT VIA WIRE".

It will show you the wire instructions for USD, every currency has its own unique instructions on making a deposit, so please read the instructions carefully when depositing fiat, when you are finished with filling out the blanks. click "CONFIRM USD DEPOSIT".

How to Deposit using Credit Card

You may also purchase bitcoin with your credit card on FTX, go to your wallet.

Click on "Manage Crypto Purchases via Credit Card".

Click on "BUY BTC WITH CREDIT CARD".

Enter the amount you wish to purchase and click "GET QUOTE".

If you accept quote, you will be redirected to our third-party partners website to supply credit card information.

How to Trade Crypto at FTX

Platform Overview

FTX’s interface is similar to other trading platforms but with additional features catered to derivative traders.

We will use BTC as an example, select BTC from the top banner and bring us on to the BTC perp contract.



1) Cryptocurrency Selector

When you scroll over a particular cryptocurrency, you’ll be able to select the various Futures, Move Contracts, Spot or Token products related to it.


2) Candlestick Chart

The Candlestick Chart depicts the price movements of the trading pair., showing how far and the direction the price of an asset is moved during a specific time period. Each “candlestick” shows one day. To learn more, here’s our recommended reference: Introduction to Candlesticks


3) Crypto Wallet Info

This section shares relevant information depending on which asset you’re interested in trading.

When you select a Perpetual, Move or Futures Product, you will be given provide an option to select the Max account leverage ranging from 1x to 101x.


4) Orderbook

An Order Book refers to the list of open orders arranged at different prices. This also refers to the market depth, which can give you a sense of the market’s liquidity, i.e., how much can you buy before your orders start affecting the market price of the asset.


5) Place Order

FTX allows you to execute 6 types of orders:

• Limit Order (An order to buy/sell at a specific price)
• Market Order (An order to buy/sell at market price)
• Stop Market Order (An order to execute market order once an assets reach a price)
• Stop Limit Order (An order to execute limit order once an asset reaches a price)
• Trailing Stop Order (Set the stop price at a fixed amount below the market with an attached ‘trailing’ amount)
• Take Profit Order (Like for a Stop-loss order, you directly input the trigger price when creating a Take profit order. If you are buying, the order will get sent when the market price drops below your trigger price. If you are selling, the order will get sent when the market price exceeds below your trigger price).

6) Market Trades

Market trades shows all the trades that occurred within the asset’s market by traders across FTX’s userbase.


7) Check Balance, Open Orders, Trigger Orders Trade History

Similar to other trading interfaces, you can check for any open orders (Orders that are currently live and not executed), order history (orders that have been executed), as well as a summary of all the assets you currently own. What is unique to FTX is that you can also see your Trigger Orders. When a trigger order becomes triggered, it’s possible for the order it sends to fail.

The account may not have enough margin, price bands during sharp market moves might prevent market orders from matching against other orders, etc. In these cases, it may be preferable to retry sending the triggered order until their overall triggered order size is filled. Retried triggers will only be sent when the standard conditions around mark price and trigger price are met. You can see the result of each trigger on the Trigger Order History page by clicking the “+” button on any trigger order set to Retry to view all its triggers.

Placing Orders

If we are looking to get "Long" we make sure obviously we are selecting Buy BTC in this top header.

If we are looking to get "Short" we select the Sell BTC header and that is going to allow us to open a Short position.

For now we are looking at opening a Long position, if I wanted to use a market order, this would automatically enter my position at market price and what i can do in here is I can select the amount of BTC that I would like to purchase for this Long position or I can select the amount in USD.

Place this position by pressing "Buy" button.

You can see my Order has been placed and scroll down here.

Spot Margin Trading

How to enable margin trading

To enable margin trading and borrowing, visit your settings page or the borrowing page.

Click "Margin" then "Enable spot margin trading".

Once you change the setting you can see there are two options in the spot margin section "View Borrows" and "View Lending".

You can also access the borrow landing page via the window icon on the navigation bar and click "Borrow/Lending".


If you turn margin trading and borrowing on, then your account will attempt to borrow any spot assets that it is short. If you turn it off, there will instead be collateral conversions to true up any short balances.

How does borrowing/lending work?

If you have spot margin trading enabled, then you can lend out one spot token in order to borrow another; for instance you could lend out $50,000 in order to borrow 1 BTC. That USD would then be locked up and potentially loaned out to another user; you would receive interest if it was. Conversely, you would pay interest to another user on the 1 BTC you were borrowing.

There are a number of different ways to implement margin trading and borrow/lending. FTX’s is the most automatic in the industry, though the user still has full control over their borrowing and lending. Rather than requiring discrete actions to request borrows, receive them, move the funds, open/close positions, etc., the entire process is abstracted away into net balances.

As long as you have sufficient margin, you can borrow spot tokens simply by spending beyond your account’s balance of them.

So say that you have $50,000 (USD) in your account and nothing else. If you sold 1 BTC for $15,000 in the spot BTC/USD orderbook, your total balances would then be: +65,000 USD; -1 BTC. You didn’t have the BTC and so need to borrow it in order to sell it. FTX does this automatically when you sell, sending an order to the funding book on your behalf to borrow 1 BTC.

You can even do this with withdrawals! If your account has 3 BTC and nothing else, you can request a withdrawal of 1 ETH (despite not having any ETH!). FTX will automatically request a borrow for 1 ETH for you, and you can then withdraw that ETH. Note, however, that you cannot borrow to withdraw for greater size than is available and unused in the borrow-lending book!

So there’s no need to manage collateral vs margin positions vs withdrawable tokens vs margin trading vs spot trading. The same commands (buy/sell/deposit/withdraw) work normally and are allowed as long as your account has enough total collateral to support the necessary borrows.


Borrowing

For example: To borrow USD to do margin trading to buy bitcoin you need to first go to the BTC spot market trading.


Toggle "Margin" to enable trading on margin, a slider would appear.

You can choose as much USD as you want to borrow for this trade. Click "Margin Buy" to execute


Lending

Go to your wallet.

Click "Margin Lending".

Lets use USDC as an example, Click "Lend".

You need to specify the quantity you want to lend.

How to Withdraw at FTX

How to Withdraw Crypto

First you will need to log into your account on the FTX website. Once you are in, go to your wallet.

On this page you can see the balances for all the coin you have. We are going to use the stablecoins usdc as an example. Click "WITHDRAW".

Then click "WITHDRAW USDC".

Enter the amount you want to withdraw.

In the usdc address section, put in the recipients address, be sure to double check the address.

You can save and name this address for future use.

For security purposes FTX requires a 2FA code to complete the transaction, we are entering the 2FA code that is received from a linked phone.

Then click "WITHDRAW".

How to Withdraw Fiat

To withdraw Fiat, click the "WITHDRAW" button next to the currency you wish to withdraw.

Click "WITHDRAW FIAT" and follow wire instructions displayed on the page.

When you are finished with filling out the blanks. click "WITHDRAW".

Note that FTX can only wire fiat to and from bank accounts in the name of the FTX account owner.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Deposits and Withdrawals

Fees

There are no fees on deposits and withdrawals, except for ETH, ERC-20 tokens, or small BTC withdrawals.  FTX users will pay the blockchain fees for all ETH, ERC20 tokens unless they have FTT staked.

Note: For free withdrawals, however, in the case of a user whose fiat/stablecoin deposit/withdrawal volume exceeds their trading volume, we reserve the right to charge a withdrawal fee of up to 0.10%.  We will reach out to any users affected before applying this. 
 
Small BTC withdrawal fees: BTC withdrawals 0.01 BTC are free. BTC withdrawals

USD Stablecoins

USD, USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD all count as "USD Stablecoin" balances.  Depositing any of those to your FTX wallet will credit you 1:1 with USD Stablecoins. Please note that PAXG has a 0.02% on-chain transaction fee.

You can withdraw USD Stablecoins 1:1 as any of USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD with no conversion fee and no blockchain fee if you have 150ftt staked, otherwise you would be subject to blockchain fees for erc20 withdrawals. You can also transfer it to FTXs otc portal.
 

USDT

USDT can be deposited or withdrawn as either ERC20, TRC20 or SPL.  You can find all your USDT deposit addresses in your wallet.  FTX will automatically detect which chain you are withdrawing USDT on based on the address you are sending it to.
 

Wrong Address or Chain

FTX is not responsible if you send deposits or withdrawals to an incorrect address.  If you are withdrawing from FTX to an incorrect address, there is nothing FTX can do to recover the tokens.  If you deposit to an incorrect FTX address, we can attempt to recover it, but may charge a fee to do so, and if we do not generally support the deposited token or method we may be unable to recover it at all.


The chain that a crypto deposit is sent on is really important. If deposits are sent on the wrong chain we may attempt to recover it but this is in no way guaranteed. A minimum 5% fee will be charged but in many cases we will either not be able to recover the unsupported token or will require a significantly higher fee.
 

Wrong Coin

FTX is not responsible if you send deposits of a coin that FTX does not list. If you deposit a coin that FTX does not support, even if it is on a chain that FTX does support, we may not be able to recover the coin and may not support returning it to you at all. If we are able to recover it and send it back to you, doing so will incur a significantly higher (than 5%).
 

ETH deposits

FTX does automatically credit smart contract ETH deposits, although smart contract ETH deposits do take longer, there may be a 24 hour delay from when the deposit has 10 confirmations to when it will be credited to your account. Standard ETH blockchain transfers will be credited immediately after 10 confirmations.
 

Tags

Some coins require a tag, or memo, to deposit; BNB is an example.  If you deposit one of these coins to FTX, you have to include the tag as well.  The tag is the only way for us to know who deposited the BNB, so if you dont, the coin wont be credited to your account.  We can then attempt to recover it but will charge $200 to do so.

Trading

What makes FTX futures different from other futures?

The futures listed on FTX differ from other major cryptocurrency futures in the following ways:

• FTX futures are stablecoin settled: you deposit stablecoins as collateral for all of the futures, and your PNL is settled in stablecoins. This means that you get legitimate USD-based price exposure and settlement, without needing a bank account; you can also use the same base currency as collateral for all of the contracts, making it easy to shift your positions around.
• FTX futures have a unique backstop liquidity provider program which jumps in to provide to accounts in danger of bankruptcy, helping to avoid clawbacks.
• FTX futures have careful, measured margin calls to avoid large price dislocations.

How do the quarterly futures expire?

The quarterly futures expire to a TWAP of their associated index on the last Friday of every quarter between 2am and 3am UTC.

If you hold an expiring futures position, you will be credited with USD PNL equal to the expiration price shortly after.

What is a perpetual future?

Perpetual futures dont expire. Instead, every hour, each perpetual contract has a funding payment where longs pay shorts equal to [1 hour TWAP of Premium] / 24. This helps to keep the price of the perpetual futures in line with the price of the underlying index without ever closing down positions for expiration.

How do I post collateral?

Collateral for the futures is in stablecoins. The current set of accepted stablecoins is USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD.

To deposit or withdraw collateral, go to your wallet page and deposit either USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD. Depositing either will credit your account with USD, which is automatically used as collateral for all of your futures trades.

By default all margin is posted in USD in your wallet. USD can be funded by depositing USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD.

Balances of the following coins also count towards collateral:

Coin	Weight (total)	Weight (initial)
Non-USD fiat	0.99	0.98
USDT	0.975	0.95
BTC	0.975	0.95
ETH	0.95	0.9
BNB	0.95	0.9
PAXG	0.95	0.9
XAUT	0.95	0.9
KNC	0.95	0.9
BCH	0.9	0.85
LTC	0.9	0.85
TRYB	0.9	0.85
LINK	0.9	0.85
TRX	0.9	0.85
CUSDT	0.9	0.85
XRP	0.9	0.85
SOL	0.9	0.85
BVOL	0.85	0.8
IBVOL	0.85	0.8
OKB	0.85	0.8
HT	0.85	0.8
MKR	0.8	0.8
SUSHI	0.8	0.8
SNX	0.8	0.8
YFI	0.8	0.8
SXP	0.8	0.8
BTMX	0.8	0.8
OMG	0.8	0.8
TOMO	0.8	0.8
AAVE	0.8	0.8
OKB	0.85	0.8
HT	0.85	0.8
MATIC	0.8	0.8
LEO	0.85	0.8
Tokenized Stocks (e.g. AAPL, TSLA, etc.)	0.85	0.8
SRM	0.9	0.85
FTT (optional)	0.95	0.95

By default all positions use the same collateral pool, and all USD, non-USD fiat, and above cryptocurrencies in your wallet count as collateral. Each subaccount has one central collateral wallet and uses cross margining for the account. Each subaccount has separate margin and collateral from other subaccounts.

If you want to use isolated margin create a subaccount for that position and move in collateral.