Binance API Seemingly Reveals Ongoing Margin Trading Implementation

Changes made to the public Application Programming Interface (API) of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance seemingly reveal that the company is working on implementing margin trading.

A Reddit user brought the API changes to public attention on March 20 after they were updated last week, noting that the Binance public API response differs from what it should be according to the official documentation released by the company on GitHub. More precisely, the API now includes two additional boolean — which means that their value can be only true or false — variables.

The name of the first added variable is “isSpotTradingAllowed,” while the second is “isMarginTradingAllowed.” The self-explanatory variable names seemingly suggest that Binance is in the midst of implementing margin trading capability.

At press time, data returned by the API also shows that isSpotTradingAllowed is set to true (enabled) and isMarginTradingAllowed is set to false (disabled) on all of the 482 trading pairs.

Binance first promised in the feature rollout section of its white paper that margin trading would be implemented after spot trading and before futures on its exchange. As one Reddit user points out in a comment to the post, what’s new now is the actual change in the API.

Other crypto exchanges already offer margin trading.

In February, major Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange OKEx added four new margin trading pairs to its platform with up to 100x leverage. And in December of last year, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex launched margin trading for stablecoin Tether (USDT) against USD.