You can profit from rising ATOM price by going long Atom futures. And, when ATOM price is falling, you can make profits by going short. This feature of futures trading enable you to navigate all types of market conditions profitably. Compare this with directly buying Atom. When price is falling, you can either sell your Atom or suffer losses. In spot trading, there is no way of profiting from falling prices.

If you are a HODLer, you can still use futures to mitigate price risk. Say, you hold ATOM. You can mitigate the risks you face when Atom is falling by going short ATOM futures. In this case, a short futures position acts as a downside protection by effectively locking the $ value of your portfolio without the need for selling your Atom. Judicious use of futures as hedge can make you a better and stronger HODLer.

Leverage enables you to open positions that are bigger than your trading capital. If you can open a position that is 10 times bigger than your trading capital, then you have 10x leverage available to you. The maximum allowed leverage for futures listed on Delta Exchange is as high as 100x. There are two ways of thinking about leverage:

• Leverage as capital efficiency driver : For opening a position of a given size, higher the leverage lower the trading capital required. The leverage in spot trading is always 1x, while it is 3-4x in margin trading. This means futures is 20 to 100 times more capital efficient than spot or margin trading.

• Leverage as a returns amplifier : Because in a leverage trade position size is greater than the capital deployed, impact of prices moves gets magnified. The return on capital deployed is leverage times the price return. This means that you can amplify your trading gains the effective use of leverage.