Micro Bitcoin (BTC) Futures Trade Volume Surpasses 1 million as traders continue to show interest
CME Group, the largest and most varied derivatives marketplace in the world, has announced that the micro bitcoin futures instrument had a traded volume of over 1 million contracts on June 25, 2021.
This shows continued interest in the instrument despite the steep fall in the prices of Bitcoin (BTC) over the last few weeks. This also proves that unlike what the doomsayers would like us to believe, the bitcoin market continues to mature and become stable though all investors and traders would wish for lesser volatility to ensure that their funds are safe and not wiped out overnight.
“We continue to see strong customer demand and rapid uptake in our new Micro Bitcoin futures contract since their introduction a little more than a month ago,” said Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products. “At one-tenth of one bitcoin, this micro-sized contact is designed to provide market participants – from institutions to smaller, sophisticated, active traders – with another tool to hedge their spot bitcoin price risk or execute bitcoin trading strategies in an efficient, cost-effective, and easily accessible way.”
This surge in the trading volume comes just about a month after the CME had reported that the micro BTC futures daily volume had crossed 500,000 contracts on May 24, 2021. The doubling of the volume in a month suggests that many traders continue to love BTC and the micro bitcoin futures which is an instrument that is one tenth the size of a normal BTC contract and hence very accessible to retail and institutional traders.
“This is a tremendous achievement for a contract that was just launched seven weeks ago,” said Brooks Dudley, Global Head of Digital Assets at ED&F Man Capital Markets. “We’ve seen more institutional volume than we anticipated, which shows that the timing was right for a smaller bitcoin contract.”
The crypto market has been quiet over the last couple of weeks though the pressure seems to be on the downside as the news coming out of China over the mining ban and the way that the regulators are looking to crack down on bitcoin around the world has led to crypto traders trying to avoid risk. The volume has also been low compared to the peak trading periods as the traders wait on the sidelines and wait for the next bullish move to get in. If and when that happens, it is likely that we see a big uptick in the trading volume across the various exchanges and also other trading platforms.
