Big Investors are Showing Interest in Bitcoin Future

CME group – a Chicago-based Exchange giant recently revealed its official statement showing its bitcoin-futures statistics in the last quarter. According to the reports, its number of contracts have increased by 61% in 2019 when compared to its figures in 2018. The reason revealed by the company was the interest shown by big investors in bitcoin-futures.

CME released a statement on Monday stating that the number of outstanding positions increased to 4,629 contracts from 2,873 in the third quarter of 2018. As per the reports from Coindesk, this hike came up in spite of the quarters 25% drop in bitcoin price. The open interest in the CME’s contracts were only down by 1% when compared to the second-quarter levels.

The Chicago-based exchange also revealed that its average daily volume of contracts traded during the third quarter were 5,534, i.e., 10% more than the previous year. They also added that this rise was the equivalent of 27,670 bitcoin or $289 million.

“Institutional flow remained strong, with 454 new accounts added, compared with 231 added in the third quarter of 2018,” CME said. The entities with more than 25 bitcoins, which were used as proxies by large investors, also shot up to 47 from 45 in the second quarter and 34 in the third quarter of last year.

This Chicago-based Exchange Company debuted into this field of bitcoin futures in the year 2017. It managed to do better than its rival Cboe Global Markets, which aborted its own contract in the beginning of this year.

But Cboe Global Markets were not the only rivals, as CME faces new rivalry from Bakkt, a startup sponsored by the Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange. Bakkt began a new bitcoin-futures contract in September with the aim of attracting big investors who have the capacity to make bets on cryptocurrency.

CME’s bitcoin-futures had around 50% of its trading volume from outside the US in the third quarter. Out of this, 26% came from Asia Pacific and 21% came from Europe and Middle East.