MOVE Contracts

Overview

A MOVE contract pays the absolute change in an asset's price over a fixed epoch. It trades on an order book with margin, and it has no direction.

The contract

Settlement value: |close − open|, in USD per contract
Open: The reference price of the underlying at the start of the epoch
Close: The oracle price of the underlying, read when the epoch ends
Epochs: Aligned to UTC: hourly, daily (00:00), weekly (Monday 00:00) and monthly (the 1st)
Naming: BTC-MOVE-1D is the daily contract on BTC
Collateral: USDC

If BTC opens the day at 85,000 and closes at 86,200, the daily contract settles at $1,200. If it closes at 83,800 instead, it also settles at $1,200. Only the distance from the open counts.

Price during the epoch

While the epoch runs, the contract trades at the market's estimate of its final value. Early in the epoch that price is mostly expectation. As the epoch runs out it converges to the move that has actually happened, and at settlement it equals it.

Long and short

PnL is linear: one contract gains or loses $1 for each $1 change in the contract price. A long profits if the move ends up larger than the price paid. A short profits if it ends up smaller.

Held to settlement, a long bought at the entry price profits if the underlying closes further than that amount from the open, in either direction. The short profits in between.

There are no funding payments. Positions do not roll over: when an epoch settles, its positions settle at the final value and the next epoch starts with a new open.