As retail participation in the crypto space grows, the Asian crypto exchange has seen a solid surge in the BTC futures trading volumes. Bybit alone contributes 16% of the total Bitcoin futures open interest across all global exchanges.
Asian cryptocurrency exchange Bybit is showing solid growth in recent times. Amid the recent Bitcoin craze, the industry ranking of Bybit has shot up making it the world’s second-largest bitcoin-futures trading platform by open interest. Interestingly, the recent jump in Bybit’s ranking also comes as the BTC futures open interest tops $23 billion.
#bitcoin futures open interest new all-time-high $23bln pic.twitter.com/ylqrrM08xQ
— skew (@skewdotcom) March 14, 2021
As per the data from SKew Analytics, Bybit alone accounts for 16% or over $3.5 billion of Bitcoin futures open interest worldwide. However, Binance is still in the top spot occupying 17.5% market share.
As said, Bybit has registered explosive growth during the Bitcoin bull run over the last six months. Last October 2020, Bybit was ranking sixth and jumped to the fifth position. In a word with CoinDesk, Bybit spokesperson said that its client profile is 70% retail and 30% institutional. The spokesperson added:
“We have to recognize the overall bull market as a key factor,” and we certainly prepared ourselves well in taking advantage of it by increasing our server capacity and building in redundancy. When large volume came with sudden spikes/volatility, we managed to execute orders as usual while many other exchanges experienced downtime.”
CME Slips the Ranks on Bitcoin Futures
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has been one of the top preferences for institutional trading activities. While the CME platform was at the top in terms of trading volumes a few months back, it has now slipped below OKEx to the fourth position.
The CME Exchange has dropped down the ranks because of the cool-down in the institutional trading activity. On the other hand, the spot market activity shows that retail participation has surged in recent times. As per the recent data from JPMorgan, retail investors have overwhelmed institutional investors so far in this quarter. Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp told Bloomberg:
“For many retail cryptocurrency traders, Bitcoin was the bread-and-butter trade of the pandemic. Meme stock trading volatility burnt many, but Bitcoin has maintained an amazingly bullish trend that has made most winners. Retail traders got reinvigorated with the latest NFT buzz and as the stimulus checks hit their bank accounts.”
The CoinDesk report shows that Bybit’s growth recently could also be due to its referral program introduced in early January this year.
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