Europeans traders became extremely active for Bitcoin futures trading on BitMEX
The last days of 2019 must not be the time of Asia-trend anymore. Bitcoin traders and investors in Europe have started to operate more in the past month, accounting for the majority of trading volume on the BitMEX XBT/USD perpetual Bitcoin futures contract.
Traders in Europe are starting to look to Bitcoin futures trading on BitMEX
Around this time in 2018, the Bitcoin price was also sideways. The difference is that in 2018, Bitcoin price fluctuated around $3,000; And in 2019, this number is currently hovering around $7,000. The second difference is that in 2018, we don’t have any derivative products except for the expectation on Bitcoin ETF. But in 2019, with the launch of Bakkt’s physically-focused Bitcoin Futures and other significant updates, Bitcoin has grown and, perhaps, matured as a decentralized currency in the last 350 days or so.
Apart from Bakkt, it seems that Bitcoin traders and investors in Europe are paying particular attention to Bitcoin futures trading on BitMEX futures. Specifically, according to the analysis from skew, European hours have been the most active in the last month, accounting for the majority of trading volume on the BitMEX XBT/USD perpetual contract.
European hours have been the most active in the last month.
Here hourly volumes in UTC time for BitMEX’s XBTUSD contract
Morning you get Asia + Europe and afternoon Europe + US. Will be hard to disrupt time zones! pic.twitter.com/gbhAJ7XrSE
— skew (@skewdotcom) December 15, 2019
BitMEX is a famous derivative exchange with 24-hour trading volume, almost always fluctuating over $ 1 billion. In particular, Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency on BitMEX when capturing more than 92.2% of the volume on the exchange.
Source: CoinGecko
The number of Bitcoin liquidations for the year increased to $19.46 billion on BitMEX. Despite the slow growth, the BitMEX insurance fund has risen to about 33,000 BTC since December 7, 2019. A total of $12.4 billion in long was liquidated, while the shorts didn’t come out unscathed either as $7.05 billion shorts were liquidated over the course of 2019. These liquidations are probably also one of the reasons why the BitMEX insurance fund has increased the balance by 59% since the beginning of 2019.
Source: CoinGecko
Talk a little more about Ethereum, the smart contract platform. ETH contributed more than 4% of the total trading volume. Next is Bitcoin’s XBTZ19 Futures contract, which contributes about 1.9% to the total trading volume.
Source: CoinGecko
The EU still restricts Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
Despite the sharp increase in Bitcoin trading activity in Europe, they are not completely friendly with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The EU has adopted strict KYC regulations and even plans to monitor it more closely in the coming months. Even BottlePay, a cryptocurrency payment service, decided to close because AML laws are too harsh.
To maintain our integrity as service providers, and to protect the interests of our users, we have taken the painful decision to shut Bottle Pay down rather than become subject to the new #5AMLD regulations.
Please withdraw funds within the next 2 weeks.https://t.co/dZltbf7vjn— Bottle Pay (@bottlepay) December 13, 2019
European-based companies will be forced to adopt new standards on anti-money laundering regulations starting from January 10, 2020, which will burden the smaller companies. Even LocalBitcoins has increased its requirement to comply with Finnish registration and EU law.
It is difficult to estimate what has caused Europe’s interest in BTC futures. The Euro itself has a 1.45% share of Bitcoin trading on the spot markets, as US dollar positions are still considered the leading currency pair.
At the same time, the new President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has spoken out in favor of adopting the digital currency approach. Lagarde stated that the ECB must rise by creating a stablecoin.
Activity is still relatively lower than the peak trading period. But Europe has emerged as one of the hotter cryptocurrency spaces over the past year. More favorable banking services, as well as increasing wealth and a technology sector, have increased Europe’s interest in cryptocurrency trading.
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