Yesterday evening, Bitcoin (BTC) reached its highest price since December 2021. This means that the price is now not far from its all-time high of $69,000 from November 2021.
We are currently seeing a similar development with Ethereum (ETH). The big retailers have also noticed this; Interest in both Bitcoin and Ethereum has reached new record levels in the derivatives market.
Bitcoin and Ethereum futures open contracts hit new records
This emerges from market data from the crypto analysis platform CoinGlass. More precisely, it is the so-called open interest (OI). The OI for futures shows the number of currently open and unsettled contracts. There is an indication of how much interest and activity there is in Bitcoin and Ethereum futures trading.
There are 456,000 BTC worth of Bitcoin futures open on all exchanges measured, which is worth more than $24.7 billion at the current price. According to CoinGlass, the previous record was $24.2 billion, set in April 2021.
A similar story applies to Ethereum futures contracts. The previous record was set in November 2021 at $11.2 billion. The OI is approximately $11.34 billion at the time of writing.
CME and Binance are still the largest cryptocurrency futures exchanges
Additionally, Bitcoin and Ethereum OI account for approximately 2.3% and 2.9% of the total market cap, respectively. That’s a significant percentage, largely driven by institutional traders.
They enjoy trading futures contracts, which are very complex and involve significant built-in leverage. The amounts mentioned refer to the nominal or total value of the contracts, including the built-in leverage.
The crypto futures market has been in the news regularly over the past few months. For example, last November, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) became the new market leader for Bitcoin futures contracts. Previously this was Binance. Currently, the CME is still the largest with an open interest of no less than 130,000 BTC or almost 30% of all outstanding contracts. Binance is still close behind with an open interest of 113,000 BTC.
The situation is slightly different with Ethereum. Binance is still by far the largest there with 1.18 million ETH in futures contracts. Next is Bybit with over 680,000 ETH. The CME is only in fourth place with 347,000 ETH.
