CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) has stood out in relation to the volume of futures contracts traded and in October it has remained in second position, ahead of other exchanges, in number of open interest contracts, surpassing BitMEX, which is falling more and more in terms of volume.
CME launched its bitcoin futures contracts on December 17, 2017 and almost three years later it evolved into the second largest BTC futures exchange by open contracts.
The term “open interest” refers to the sum of the value of all the futures contracts in a long or short position that are actively open. It is used to assess market activity by measuring the amount of capital that is invested in the futures market.
Until a while ago this market segment was dominated by Okex and BitMEX, which is starting to change now. The growth is noteworthy, as on October 1, CME occupied only the fifth position on the list.
The products offered by CME are based on high standards of compliance so they can be hired and therefore investors see more security to negotiate.
In addition, most investors in this segment are prohibited from trading derivatives on platforms such as Binance and BitMEX.
This serves as another indicator of the institutional appetite for bitcoin.
Skew.com statistics show that CME Group was responsible for around $800 million in bitcoin futures contracts last week.
This represents more than 15.9% of total open contracts between 12 derivative exchanges.
CME was only fifth on the list on October 1st. In front of CME is OKEx, which records US$980 million in open contracts, accounting for almost 20% of the total.
Soure: Skew
Source: Skew
According to CME, the number of BTC long contracts held by institutions is at a higher level, while hedge funds have reached a record BTC sales.
Apparently, there is a big difference in the perception of bitcoin's short and medium term trend between hedge funds and institutions.
The siege against the most popular derivative exchanges appears to be closing with regulators increasingly paying more attention to their activities. See a recent example from BitMEX, which was accused of facilitating money laundering and the case of Okex, which had suspended withdrawals and its leader wanted by the police.
Large institutions are increasingly opting for bitcoin as a way to protect equity against possible monetary inflation in sight, the result of monetary expansion in recent years and this has led other companies to do the same.
All of these analyzes, added to the analysis of the price and fundamentals of the Bitcoin network demonstrate that the valuation is happening in a sustainable, solid and reasoned way.