OKEx performed quick maintenance and surpassed BitMEX to become the largest futures trading platform

By Selena On Mar 15, 2020

OKEx has just completed a quick maintenance yesterday at a time of market volatility. The exchange has also surpassed rival BitMEX and became the largest futures trading platform.

OKEx maintenance to meet the sharply increased transaction volume

On March 12, OKEx announced it would close the exchange for system maintenance starting at 7 am and lasted for 30 minutes. On the same day, the exchange continued its trading activities. The maintenance was carried out at a time when the market experienced the most substantial recession when it dropped from $ 8,000 to $ 5,300 and reached the bottom of $ 3.800 (50% loss of value).

According to the market data update website CoinGecko on March 12, OKEx reached the US $ 3.1 billion of trading volume, an increase of 160% compared to the previous trading day. In recent months, the exchange has handled a more significant number of transactions than usual.

Bitcoin price movement over the past two days

And in recent times, OKEx has also surpassed BitMEX in terms of futures contracts. It is not clear whether short-term maintenance has fixed the problem to solve the problem of the increased trading volume. The company only said the maintenance was to ensure “improving service quality and trading experience.”

The strong rally in January and then the relentless fall of the cryptocurrency market led to a spike in trading volume and traffic on exchanges. BitMEX, the largest futures trading platform, was stifled at its peak. The infrastructure of the exchanges did not keep up and faced many regrettable problems.

OKEx surpassed BitMEX after the BTC Futures volume soared

According to Skew’s market chart, OKEx registered a volume of $ 12.12 billion, almost double that of BitMEX, a platform that has dominated the space for a long time. 24-hour future BTC volume on BitMEX is at $ 6.20 billion.

24-hour BTC futures exchange | Source: Skew

According to CoinGecko’s data, OKEx’s trading volume soared from $ 1.3 billion on March 11 to $ 5.18 billion, two days later. In March, OKEx outperformed BitMEX in BTC Futures volume in three different times. However, those suggestions are short and only with a small margin.

Interest rate BTC futures exchange | Source: Skew

However, in terms of Open Interest (OI), BitMEX leads when OKEx is second, followed by Derebit and Huobi, among others. Besides, OI on OKEx has been in decline for some time. Despite hints of a revival, OI on OKEx has dropped significantly after February of this year.

BitMEX, on the other hand, recorded a significant surge in the same period. This is an indication of the assumption that traders on OKEx are trading on their current positions, instead of opening new positions.

BitMex insurance fund posts new all-time high

The March 13 crypto market crisis devastated cryptocurrency companies across the industry, triggering the MakerDAO debt crisis and causing millions to be deployed from Binance and Deribit exchange insurance funds. Despite the widespread carnage, BitMex’s insurance fund only took two days to return to an all-time high.

Despite operating offline for 45 minutes due to a YouTube hardware problem at the end of March 13, BitMex seems to have emerged from the recent crypto market massacre more than ever. The incident showed that BitMex only deployed 1,627 to eliminate positions during the recession, reducing the exchange’s insurance fund from approximately 35,500 Bitcoin on March 11 to 33,880 BTC about 24 hours later.

On March 13, BitMex’s insurance fund recorded a high of nearly 36,500 BTC, showing that exchanges sustained no significant losses during the cryptocurrency crash.

The exchange’s insurance fund returned to its pre-incident level, with the fund holding about 35,210 BTC as if in this writing – equivalent to about 0.17% of Bitcoin’s total supply and more than 0.19% of its BTC supply. BitMex’s insurance fund is built when liquidations are made at a price higher than the bankruptcy price of positions facing margin calls.

Deribit’s insurance fund was nearly vaporized overnight as a result of the crash

In three days, Deribit’s fund dropped 53% from 391 BTC to 183 BTC. This prompted the exchange to support the fund by pumping 500 BTC from the company’s treasury.

❗️Due to extreme volatility, we’ve seen a significant impact on our BTC insurance fund. In order to prevent socialized losses we have decided to support the insurance fund and strengthen it by injecting 500 BTC of company funds.

— Deribit (@DeribitExchange) March 13, 2020

Binance has also taken steps to pump up its insurance – which is down 51% from 12.8 million USDT to 8.2 million in one day. Since then, Binance has injected 4.2 million USDT into its fund – currently holding nearly 10.5 million USDT.

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