Yesterday’s highly volatile BTC performance has led to increased trading volumes on numerous platforms, including CME Bitcoin futures registering a new all-time high of $2.7 billion.
Launched in late 2017, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange allows institutional investors to trade with the primary cryptocurrency on a regulated platform. Apart from short-lived low levels of trading volume, the exchange has enjoyed increased adoption from such customers.
Data from the analytics resource Skew revealed that the Bitcoin futures volume skyrocketed to a new all-time high yesterday of $2.7 billion. As such, it surpassed the previous record marked in late December of slightly over $2.5 billion.
Such a high trading volume could be expected to some extent when analyzing yesterday’s price developments. Bitcoin came off a bullish weekend in which the cryptocurrency painted its latest ATH at almost $35,000.
However, Monday was CME’s first working day this year. Moreover, BTC’s price increase during CME’s closed days left an opened gap of about $5,000 – the largest one to date.
Bitcoin filled the gap by plummeting with about $5,500 merely hours after CME opened for trading. The primary cryptocurrency bounced off from its intraday low of $27,700, reclaimed $30,000, and headed towards $33,000.
Most alternative coins mimicked BTC’s volatile day, which led to high volumes on other platforms as well. The leading digital asset exchange Binance also reached a record.
The derivatives volume surged to $56.8 billion, while the spot volume was at over $23.6 billion – in total, over $80 billion in a day. These numbers were significantly higher than Binance’s record days during the previous bull cycle in late 2017.
The regulated exchange recently announced plans to enable its institutional clients to receive exposure to the second-largest digital asset by market cap – Ethereum.
CME said that the ETH futures will arrive in February 2021. One contract will contain 50 ETH, and will be initially settled in cash, as it is with the Bitcoin futures. This means that investors will receive the dollar equivalent of their contracts rather than the underlying asset at the end of the expiration date.
The exchange asserted that the launch of ETH futures comes after a strong customer demand.
