FTX, Bybit among the first exchanges to launch spot ETHW trading

Major cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX and Bybit, are among the first crypto trading platforms to launch spot trading for Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) tokens.

While the Ethereum blockchain has not forked into two separate networks just yet, crypto exchanges are rushing to start trading EthereumPoW (ETHW) tokens.

At the time of writing, ETHW Fork IOU token is now trading on five exchanges, including the global FTX exchange, the FTX US platform, Bybit, Gate.io and MEXC Global, according to data from CoinGecko.

According to the data, FTX is handling more than 80% of ETHW trading, which is estimated to amount to $24.7 million at the time of writing. Bybit and MEXC Global account for 10% and 17.6% of ETHW trading volumes, respectively.

At the time of writing, the ETHW Fork IOU token is trading at $24,36, down around 36.7% over the past 24 hours.

Bybit exchange took to Twitter on Thursday to officially announce that it launched ETHW trading against the Tether (USDT) stablecoin. “ETHW deposits and withdrawals are coming soon,” the firm noted. ETHW/USD trading page is also now available on the FTX website.

The listed ETHW Fork token is an IOU cryptocurrency where IOU stands for “I owe you,” meaning that one party owes a debt to another one. That is because ETHW would derive from the potential Ethereum hard fork and the chain has not forked yet.

Related: F2Pool, Poolin to start Ethereum PoW mining after ETHW mainnet launch

The Ethereum blockchain hard fork is expected to follow the Ethereum Merge event that occurred earlier this Thursday. As some community participants preferred to keep supporting the mining-based PoW Ethereum version, the fork is expected to split the chain in two, the proof-of-stake version and a PoW-based one.

As previously reported, the hard fork iexpected to occur within 24 hours following the Merge.