Last month, we were talking about how big CME’s volume is for Bitcoin futures.
This month that continues as recent Cointelegraph reporting shows that this May is slated to become the biggest month yet for investor activity in CME’s Bitcoin futures market.
“The Chicago Mercantile Exchange purportedly revealed that the average daily bitcoin futures trading volume hit a new high of 14,000 contracts solely in May 2019,” writes Helen Partz at Cointelegraph this morning. “To date, May 13 has reportedly become the biggest trading day for CME’s bitcoin futures, with the platform having registered 33,700 contracts worth $1.35 billion in bitcoin at the time. The exchange also revealed that the number of BTC futures trading accounts has hit more than 2,500.”
As we mentioned before, CME may be benefiting from the shuttering of CBOE futures desks months ago.
In any case, analysts feel that the spike in Bitcoin has contributed to the futures trading.
“CME’s BTC futures volumes accounted for a whopping 86.6 percent of the total regulated Bitcoin derivatives market,” wrote Aakash Athawasya yesterday at AMBCrypto. “The exchange’s volume increased from $70.5 million in March to $256 million in April.”
It also makes sense to have a vibrant futures market for this cryptocurrency, which is both volatile and widely recognized as a household name. There’s so much speculation on where Bitcoin is going to be in one year and two years and five years that there would seem to be avid interest in Bitcoin futures, and so CME plays a valuable role in the market ecosystem. It’s being rewarded for that with record volumes.
However, we’re also continuing to report on the overall regulatory landscape. Will the SEC approve a Bitcoin ETF which will further enlarge the Bitcoin investor community? Will various state regulator efforts to curb exchange behavior fail or succeed? And will companies like IBM and Starbucks continue to jump on the blockchain bandwagon?
Keep an eye on our site for indicators on all of these key issues, and rebalance your crypto portfolio frequently, because, as we so often point out, it is a volatile part of the finance sector.
