* Based on revenue excluding FX (published financial statements, February 2018); number of active UK financial spread betting accounts (Investment Trends UK Leveraged Trading Report released June 2017).
Contract |
MT4 symbol |
One contract means |
Value of one full point (CFDs) |
Professional margin required [2] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | BTCUSD | 1 BTC | $1 | 5% |
| Bitcoin Cash | BCHUSD | 1 BCH | $1 | 10% |
| ETHUSD | 1 ETH | $1 | 5% | |
| Litecoin | LTCUSD | 1 LTC | $1 | 10% |
Notes to table
1. Margin requirements represent a percentage of the overall position value.
2. Professional clients are exempt from regulatory limits on leverage in place for retail clients, and are able to trade on lower margins as a result. You can find out more, and check your eligibility, on our professional trading page.
3. Please note that in times of high volatility, our minimum spreads can increase significantly.
Overnight funding charges
If you are long, for Bitcoin you will pay a daily overnight funding charge of 0.0694% (25% per Annum) for positions held at 10pm UK time. For Ether/ Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash/Bitcoin and Crypto 10 you will pay 0.0625% (22.5% per annum). For all other cryptocurrency positions you will pay 0.0764% (27.5% per-annum).
If you are short, for Bitcoin you will receive a daily overnight funding charge of 0.0139% (5% per Annum) for positions held at 10pm UK time. For Ether/Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin you will pay 0.0208% (7.5% per annum). For Crypto 10 you will receive 0.0208% (7.5% per annum) and for all other cryptocurrencies you will receive 0.0347% (12.5% per-annum).
Please note that for any position held through 10pm (London time), we’ll make a daily interest credit or debit adjustment Monday to Sunday. Adjustments to the number of days charged will be made in advance of the Christmas and New Year holidays, to cover settlement of trades over these bank holidays.
We review our overnight funding charges frequently, and keep our website and contract details updated with the latest rates.
See below overnight funding calculations for bitcoin as an example.
| Overnight funding for long bitcoin position | Overnight funding for short bitcoin position |
Long 1 contract on Bitcoin USD ($1), which is currently trading at a price of 30,000. ( 1 x 30,000 ) x 0.0694% = $20.82 Client will be charged $20.82 funding per day. |
Short 1 contract on Bitcoin USD ($1), which is currently trading at a price of 30,000. ( 1 x 30,000 ) x 0.0139% = $4.17 Client will receive $4.17 funding per day. |
Why can I sometimes not trade cryptocurrencies?
Given the high demand and price increases, we may restrict any new orders to buy or sell cryptocurrency, both online and over the telephone.
As we hedge client exposure in the underlying market, our interests are aligned with yours. However, due to the various risks and complexity involved in trading underlying cryptocurrencies, there's a limit to the total amount of physical cryptocurrency we can hold as a business. We therefore need to reflect this by limiting the exposure that each client is allowed to maintain through CFDs and spread bets. This limit is currently £250,000 notional (or equivalent) per client across all cryptocurrency holdings. Any client with a notional size above this limit is at risk of having their cryptocurrency positions reduced.
Sometimes our platform won't allow you to open a new long position on cryptocurrencies. This happens when we reach our maximum exposure in the market. You'll be able to open a position when our trading volume changes.
Please note this should not affect your ability to close any existing open positions, provided this does not increase or create net long exposure.
You can check whether or not our cryptocurrencies markets are 'unlongable' in the platform. In IG Trading, click the 'information' icon in the deal ticket, then select 'other'. In the classic platform, click on your market's dropdown and select 'get info'. Please refresh your browser for the latest updates.
IG policy on blockchain forks
We base the price of our cryptocurrency products on the underlying market, made available to us by the exchanges and market-makers with which we trade.
There is currently one accepted decentralised ledger which records all cryptocurrencies transactions – as well as an equivalent for ether – called the blockchain. When the software of different miners becomes misaligned, a split – or 'fork' – in the blockchain may occur. This results in the existence of two different blockchains.
Generally, cryptocurrency users quickly agree which version to continue to use, causing minimal disruption. The old version of the blockchain is then discontinued.
In the event that one version isn't discontinued – known as a hard fork – we will generally follow the blockchain that has the majority consensus of cryptocurrency users, and will therefore use this as the basis for our prices. We reserve the right to determine which blockchain and cryptocurrency unit have the majority consensus behind them.
If the hard fork results in a viable second cryptocurrency, we may create an equivalent position on client accounts to reflect this. However this action is at our absolute discretion, and we will have no obligation to do so. If, and when, the second cryptocurrency is tradeable on a major exchange, we will endeavour to represent that value. We’ll do this either by making the product available to close based on the valuation on that venue, or by booking a cash adjustment on client accounts. If, within a reasonable timeframe, the second currency does not become tradeable on major exchanges or is otherwise deemed not to be viable as a currency (for example, it is not mined), we may delete any positions that had previously been created at no value on client accounts. We will take steps to notify you when we have taken this action.
When a hard fork occurs, there may be substantial price volatility around the event, and we may suspend trading throughout if we do not have reliable prices from the underlying market.
We will endeavour to notify you of potential blockchain forks, however it is your responsibility to make yourself aware of the forks that could occur.
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