FTX to Launch New Version in November

FTX will be launching a new version of its exchange next month, which will significantly improve its order throughput and reduce latency, company CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said via Twitter on 10 October.

According to the announcement, the popular cryptocurrency exchange is planning to roll out a “bunch of improvements” — that have been “in the works” for most of the year — to the FTX matching engine over the next month. The new features are expected to double FTX’s order throughput and halve its order latency, significantly improving the speed of trade execution on the exchange. Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted:

While users will be able to experience some of the new features over the next month, the exchange is planning to release “a bunch” of them on 21 November, the official launch date of FTX: V2. The company’s matching engine has been the subject of user complaints for some time now, with most of the criticism being focused its high latency and low throughput.

Last week, CNBC reported that FTX had entered into a partnership with payments giant Visa, which will see the exchange release crypto debit cards in 40 countries around the world, with a focus on Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Bankman-Fried noted at the time that crypto debit cards were key to the growth of the market, as they made it easier for merchants to accept crypto as payment. Visa’s CFO, Vasant Prabhu, said in a statement:

“Even though values have come down there’s still steady interest in crypto. We don’t have a position as a company on what the value of cryptocurrency should be, or whether it’s a good thing in the long run — as long as people have things they want to buy, we want to facilitate it.”