Interview: Marcus Fetherstone on Eightcap’s 300+ crypto derivatives offering

Eightcap is a Melbourne, Australia-based FX and CFD broker founded in 2009 and quickly made a name for itself due to its highly competitive derivative product offering.

Doing like most successful brokers do, surfing the trend, Eightcap saw the digital asset class as an opportunity for further differentiation.

The derivatives provider is now leading the way with an extensive crypto derivatives offering that includes more than 300 instruments with very tight spreads.

FinanceFeeds spoke with Marcus Featherstone, Director of Operations at Eightcap, to learn more about the broker’s product offering and its role in shaping the industry.

Eightcap has successfully positioned itself as a leading crypto derivatives broker. What makes Eightcap’s offering so appealing?

Previously, we have primarily focused on the more traditional asset classes. With the increased volatility in the cryptocurrency market, we noticed that investors wanted to speculate on both rising and falling prices, compared to purely buying and selling crypto. We also saw the gap in the market for a regulated broker who could provide an extensive range of cryptocurrencies while also having the customer experience as a central focal point. We wanted to offer the best possible product suite while maintaining the best market pricing and a seamless user experience from onboarding to withdrawals. Last year, we launched over 300 crypto derivatives, one of the most extensive derivative offerings in the market currently. We offer everything from altcoins to crypto-crosses and crypto indices. We also ensured that our spreads remained ultra-low, especially on the more popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Our offering is appealing due to the product scale, which is paired with other key elements such as regulation, speedy withdrawals and ultimately, pricing that stands out in the market. We appeal to the crypto investors who want to diversify their portfolios by trading crypto derivatives and derivatives traders who have had problems concerning deposits and withdrawals at notable exchanges. Moreover, we are giving derivative traders who commonly trade other assets such as stocks and forex an opportunity to break into the crypto derivatives markets with an attractive offering that meets their trading needs.

Regulated Crypto CFD products solve many of the unnecessary risks and uncertainty within the crypto ecosystem, while still providing exposure to the much-desired volatility in digital assets. What is your take on future regulation of crypto, and what would be Eightcap’s play?

Regulation has become a key area of focus over the more recent months. The crypto market landscape will change shortly due to new legislation and measures that will come in to protect consumer interest effectively. A few central banks and government bodies are actively discussing new legislation covering the cryptocurrency market. The Biden Administration is proposing new legislative measures that will act in a bid to try and stop crypto crime. More calls have come in to focus on stablecoin regulation, especially after the collapse of Terra’s stablecoin, which led to crypto lenders freezing consumer withdrawals. The Bank of England has followed suit, with its financial policy committee wanting ‘enhanced regulation’ of the digital currency sector.

With that being said, there will be an inevitable change in the sector regarding regulation. However, as Eightcap is a derivatives provider, the services and products we offer derivative traders will be largely unaffected as derivatives are covered under our existing licenses, which gives us an edge over the many other derivative players in the space. Our licenses all work to protect derivative traders, and we take our regulation and responsible operating seriously. We would extend this level of protection and remain in the same mindset to any new regulatory measures that come into effect.

Is the new generation of traders joining Eightcap for its crypto offering alone or are they also trying other asset classes?

We have an influx of new crypto derivatives traders on the back of the offering we launched last year and our latest collaboration with TradingView. However, we do offer other financial instruments and see great demand across all of our asset classes. With the current economic landscape, there are different opportunities for derivative traders across several assets, and we have seen this with our core client base. For example, we have our derivative traders who are purely interested in metals and heavily speculate on gold CFDs. Regarding new clients coming to us, we see varied interests that predominantly lie in the stock, FX and crypto categories.

Eightcap is an MT4/MT5 broker, thus providing access to expert advisors (EAs). Why did you choose to double down on automated trading by partnering with Capitalise.ai?

Partnering with Capitalise.ai was a significant milestone for us to make trading automation possible for all trading levels. MT4 and MT5 offer their versions of expert advisors, which is great for the knowledgeable, more advanced MT4/MT5 traders who understand the trading platform in and out. We doubled-down on automation to provide more options for our clients, ensuring they can access trading tools such as this for free with their trading accounts. The collaboration with Capitalise.ai makes trading automation accessible for the advanced and novice trader as they can automate their trades code-free.

We are committed to providing an exceptional trading experience, and part of that is to offer a range of tools that any trader of any level of expertise can add to their arsenal of tools before trading the financial markets. You aren’t just trading our products. We want the client to be able to build their knowledge and use our tools and educational resources to make the most out of any market opportunity that awaits them.

How can traders benefit from the new partnership with Tradingview

TradingView has been another key milestone for us this year, and we are excited to see how we can build on this to deliver our clients the best range of tools and resources. Our traders can benefit from our partnership with TradingView in several different ways. By connecting their trading accounts with TradingView, clients will be able to trade directly off charts, access 100+ pre-built and 1000+ community-built indicators, 50+ smart drawing tools, the ability to use pine script and real trading stimulation and also switch on trading alerts, so they never miss a price level.

What does Eightcap have in store for the foreseeable future?

We are working on a few things now and will be excited to announce what they are in due course. As mentioned, we want to deliver a trading experience that is more than just the product range we offer, to make this happen we will be expanding our product range and adding more dynamic pricing to our financial instruments.