Hassan Maishera
CME overtakes Binance in the Bitcoin futures game
Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, was also number one in the Bitcoin futures market. However, that position no longer belonged to the cryptocurrency exchange following the launch of the ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF.
The United States SEC approved the ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF last weekend, and it started trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Arca earlier this week. Within the first two days of listing on the stock exchange, the ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF had already reached a $1 billion trading volume.
The surge in its trading volume has helped the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to replace Binance as the world’s biggest bitcoin futures platform. Retail and institutional investors have shown a huge appetite for the ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF trading under the ticker $BITO on the NYSE Arca platform.
Currently, CME accounts for 22% or $5.68 billion of the total global futures open interest of $25.7 billion, while Binance contributes $5.66 billion to the worldwide tally. Thanks to the ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF, the amount of funds locked in the CME-based futures contracts has gone up by 300% since the start of the month. More than $1.5 billion flowed into the market after ProShares’ bitcoin ETF went live on Tuesday.
ProShares’ fund closing in on its October limit
The ProShares Bitcoin futures ETF has gained massive adoption since it was launched earlier this week. In less than a week, the fund appears to be close to hitting the limit in the October expiry. The fund could snap up longer duration futures as the interest in the investment vehicle continues to increase amongst retail and institutional investors.
Bitcoin has slightly retreated after hitting the $67k all-time high earlier this week. At the time of writing, BTC is trading above $63k per coin, down by 2% over the past 24 hours.
