The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a regulated derivatives exchange that offers Bitcoin futures, has risen to the second spot in the list of Bitcoin futures exchanges in terms of notional open interest. As of October 30, CME’s open interest stood at $3.58 billion, just behind Binance’s $3.9 billion, and ahead of Bybit’s $2.6 billion and OKX’s $1.78 billion.
The standard Bitcoin futures contract offered by CME is valued at five Bitcoin, while the micro contract is worth a tenth of a Bitcoin. On the other hand, offshore exchanges mainly focus on perpetual futures, which don’t have an expiration date and use the funding rate method to maintain price parity with the market price.
Bitcoin open interest represents the total number of outstanding Bitcoin futures or options contracts in the market at any given time. It is an indicator of the capital flowing in and out of the Bitcoin derivatives market. An increase in open interest suggests a bullish sentiment, while a decline indicates bearish sentiment.
CME’s rising open interest not only elevated the platform to the second spot among futures crypto exchanges but also saw its cash-settled futures contracts exceed 100,000 BTC in volume. This represents a significant 25% market share in the Bitcoin futures market.
Furthermore, a majority of the investment into CME futures has come via standard futures contracts. This indicates a growing interest from institutional investors, coinciding with Bitcoin’s double-digit surge in October, which took its price to a new one-year high above $35,000.
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