Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary Bakkt reports a record number of trades for its monthly Bitcoin futures contracts as BTC prices hit a new high for the year.
The institutional investment platform reported its highest monthly Bitcoin futures figure on July 28 with 11,506 contracts, an 85% increase over the previous record. The move followed a rise in the price of the underlying asset to a 2020 high of $ 11,400.
On July 29, Bakkt topped the new record with 11,706 contracts traded.
“Talk about momentum! We broke yesterday’s record with 11,706 Bakkt Bitcoin Futures traded today, that’s more than $ 125MM of bitcoin. ”
Bakkt’s physically settled contracts are paid in BTC instead of cash settled contracts that are delivered in USD. The momentum has been fueled by Bitcoin prices that have finally broken out of their two and a half month range trading channel.
CME futures on fire
According to Skew analytics data, Bakkt was not the only institutional exchange to break records this week. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which has much higher volumes than Bakkt, also saw an increase in Bitcoin futures contracts on Monday.
Daily volume exceeded $ 1.3 billion, while open interest, a measure of the total number of pending derivative contracts that have not been settled, also rose to $ 724 million. According to CME data, 25,493 futures contracts were traded on Monday, and Tuesday’s preliminary count was already above 20,900 at the time of writing.
Yesterday we also saw an increase in Bitcoin CME option contracts with over 1,100 traded, the highest number in the last thirty days.
Crypto exchanges dominate
The two institutional exchanges are small fry compared to the volumes of BTC futures contracts on crypto exchanges. Skew has broken down the top cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of 24-hour volume for Bitcoin futures, and Huobi wins with $ 6.51 billion.
OKEx is the second most popular exchange for BTC futures with a daily volume of $ 5.88 billion, and Binance is a close third with $ 5.66 billion according to the data. Skew also reports that aggregate open interest on all exchanges has also increased to its highest level for a month by $ 5 billion.
According to the chart, the highest aggregate daily volume of Bitcoin futures for over a month was recorded on Monday, and on Tuesday it won’t be far behind as institutional and retail interest in BTC derivatives is picking up again.
