Japanese financial firm SBI Holdings is launching trading for a type of cryptocurrency derivative called contracts for difference, or CFDs.
Already live on its foreign exchange trading platform, SBI FX Trade, the contracts come in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and XRP flavors.
The firm said in an announcement Friday that traders can pair the crypto assets with both the U.S. dollar and the yen, meaning there are six CFD choices in total.
Orders can be placed from around 15 yen ($0.14) to a maximum open position of 500 bitcoin ($5.73 million at press time), for the BTC/JPY pair.
SBI Holdings said it also has a mobile app for the CFD trading and orders can be placed around the clock on any day of the week.
Users can make use of leverage – in effect, borrowing from the platform – to make trades.
CFDs are very short-term contracts that pay the difference in price between the open and closing trades.
They are not without controversy and a U.K. financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has said it plans to ban these types of derivatives for retail traders.
The FCA said last year that such financial products are “ill-suited” to retail investors “who cannot reliably assess the value and risks of derivatives or ETNs that reference certain cryptoassets.”
SBI Holdings specifically said in its announcement it will be catering to both beginner and expert traders.