As FX News Group has reported, in May 2021 Saxo Bank introduced CryptoFX: a new set of instruments that enables clients to gain exposure to the volatility of prices on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Saxo Bank has also enabled its clients to use Saxo’s OpenAPI to trade with these new instruments.
The Saxo team has published detailed guidelines on how to make use of the OpenAPI to trade crypto.
Saxo Bank’s new CryptoFX instruments are essentially regular FX crosses. This means that they are traded in an identical manner to the regular FX instruments like EURUSD or USDJPY. Crypto FX are implemented as a cross between a cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, and a secondary currency like USD, EUR and JPY.
This means that:
- P/L are always in a major currency like USD.
- Cryptos can not be traded against each other. Pairs like ETHBTC or LTCBTC are not possible to trade.
- Because Crypto FX are implemented as other FX instruments, they behave in the same way: e.g., they are traded through the same endpoints and have the same AssetType parameter, available order types, response parameters etc.
Indicative prices can be retrieved through the /trade/v1/infoprices endpoint. This provides information on prices, market state etc.
It’s possible to get historical price data for the Crypto FX Instruments back to 19-04-2021 using the chart/v1/charts endpoint. The endpoint requires a specification of the Uic, AssetType and a Horizon. See the table above for which Uics and AssetType to use and the endpoint reference docs for available horizons.
Just like for regular FX crosses you may setup subscriptions to get real-time updated price and chart data.
CryptoFX instruments can be traded through OpenAPI by sending a POST request with order details to the /orders endpoint. The following order types are supported:
- Stop
- Limit
- Market
- StopLimit
- TrailingStop
Like other FX crosses, Crypto FX are traded in the weekdays and NOT in the weekends. This means that it is not possible to either open or close positions from Friday 8:59 to Sunday 5:04 GMT.
Saxo Bank can only distribute historical prices via OpenAPI going back to the 19th of April 2021.
This has the following implications:
- Queries to the /chart endpoint for any CryptoFX pair will only fetch data going back to the 19th of April 2021 00:00:00 no matter the horizon. Thus calling a horizon of for example one year will per June 2021 only return one sample starting the 1st of January 2021.
- Comparing charts of historical data between OpenAPI and SaxoTrader GO/PRO yields the same results from the 19th of April 2021 and forward. Before this date the charts on SaxoTrader GO/PRO will show historical prices and OpenAPI will not.