As of Thursday, bitcoin futures contracts worth $790 million were open on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). That is 15.8% of the global open interest tally of $5 billion – the second-highest contribution among major exchanges, data from Skew Analytics shows. The CME has overtaken BitMEX on the Bitcoin futures open interest charts.
OKEx, the market leader whose founder was also taken away by police this month, has not slipped, the exchange retained the first place, accounting for nearly 20% of total open interest. And all that despite limitations to withdrawals on its platform.
In the third position was Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency spot exchange by trading volumes, which accounted for 14.3% of the total open interest. The controversial perpetuals giant BitMEX ranked fourth.
“The CME’s rise is predominantly led by institutional participation, as most entrants from that segment are prohibited from dealing in unregulated derivatives listed on retail platforms such as BitMEX and Binance,” Matthew Dibb, co-founder and COO of Stack Funds said.
Trading volumes tell a different story. Here, Binance is still king; the the world’s largest cryptocurrency spot exchange by trading volumes traded $4.43 billion worth of futures contracts in the past 24 hours.
Read more:
- Institutions Are Responding To The Price Action By Closing Their Shorts They Opened Via The CME’s Bitcoin Futures Market
- Bitcoin Futures Open Interest [OI] On CME To Register Nearly 10-Month High, Up To $339 Million