Markets on 1024EX

1024EX runs three venues on one account, one balance and one risk engine. Two of them are the core of the exchange:

One USDC balance backs all three. No transfers between venues, no separate accounts, no separate credentials.

Why two derivatives venues

Perps and options answer different questions about the same view.

A perp expresses direction with leverage: it is the cheapest, most liquid way to be long or short, and it costs funding to hold. Risk scales with the move — a 5% adverse move at 10x removes about half the margin that opened the position.

An option expresses direction with a known worst case: you pay a premium, and that premium is the whole loss. It costs nothing to hold beyond the decay already in the price, so it cannot be liquidated. What you give up is the cap — the payout stops at the contract's maximum.

The practical split:

• High conviction, short horizon, tight risk control → perp. Tighter spreads and no decay.
• Event risk over a known date, or a view you cannot babysit → option. Earnings, a policy decision, a scheduled catalyst — a long option cannot be stopped out by a wick.
• Holding through volatility → compare the funding you will pay on a perp against the premium on an option covering the same window. At high leverage, funding on notional is a larger drag than it looks.

Using them together

The same underlying is listed on both venues — NVDA-USDC as a perp and NVDA-…-C/P as options — which makes these structures possible in one account:

• Cap the downside on a leveraged position. Long the perp, buy a put on the same underlying. The put floors the loss without closing the position or lowering leverage.
• Trade the catalyst, not the drift. Hold an option across an earnings date instead of carrying a leveraged perp through it, where a gap opens straight into your liquidation price.
• Fund a directional view. Write a covered option against a perp position you already hold — collateral is locked, so the structure cannot become a margin call. Requires writer permission.
• Hedge an event with the event market. Where the risk is a discrete outcome rather than a price path, 1024EX Predict prices the outcome directly. A macro decision that would move an equity perp can be hedged on the outcome itself.

What the venues share

• One collateral pool — USDC margins perps, collateralizes written options and funds event positions.
• One mark discipline — liquidations and triggers reference mark and index prices, never the last trade, so a thin book cannot be used to force someone out.
• One credential — a single API key trades all three; see the API section.

Where they differ