The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) recently displaced the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, becoming the biggest Bitcoin futures exchange.
CME’s recent surge in Bitcoin Futures Open Interest has been driven by massive liquidations caused by Bitcoin’s sudden price surge.
CME’s Bitcoin Futures OI Swells
According to Coinglass data, CME’s number of Bitcoin Futures in Open Interest stood at about 109K BTC, worth $4 billion, down about 2% in the past 24 hours. A few hours earlier, the number of BTC futures OI under CME had surged to 111K.
It is the first time in two years that the Binance exchange is displaced from the top spot in the metric, with the largest crypto exchange currently having a share of about 102K BTC, valued at $3.77 billion, down about 12% in the past 24 hours.
CME controlled a 24.3% share in the metric at the time of writing, while Binance controlled about 22.95%. The exchange has noticed a significant surge in BTC Futures Open Interests this year.
Just a few weeks ago, CME was the 4th largest. Late last month, CryptoPotato reported about CME controlling over 100K BTC in Bitcoin Futures Open Interest. At the time, Binance boasted about 112.6K BTC worth $3.87 billion in futures OI.
With its focus on institutional traders, CME’s metric surge is evidence of an increasing demand in market participants to trade these assets.
The head of research at FalconX recently said:
“Given the CME is a venue used almost exclusively by large traditional financial institutions, it shows how much interest there has been from this audience in crypto.”
Massive Liquidations and ETF Mania Behind the Surge
Reports indicate that this sudden displacement of Binance from the top spot results from a massive liquidation and leverage removal due to sudden BTC price surges. Coinglass data shows that about $400 million of longs and shorts were liquidated, the highest since August.
BTC moved to a high of $38K before later downing to $36K, triggering a massive liquidation in both longs and shorts.
As per reports, the price action was fuelled by spot ETF anticipations after reports suggested the registration of a corporate entity called iShares Ethereum Trust in Delaware.
The FalconX head mentioned earlier believes the ongoing excitement around spot Bitcoin ETFs with the rising number of applications is behind the market share gains for CME.
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