Trading Volume on Crypto Derivatives Reaches an All-TimeHigh

The monthly volume of crypto derivatives reached an all-time high last month by closing at $602 billion. CryptoCompare, a U.K-based data aggregator, revealed this in a report yesterday. The new record surpassed the previous record of $602 billion by a tiny fraction.

The popularity of derivatives is growing at a speedy rate, as they now take 32% of the crypto market, from 27% in April. In terms of percentage, the monthly volume increase last month was six times bigger than the increase in spot volumes the same month. This popularity is also due to claims on investments in Bitcoin and Bitcoin robot trading software by celebrities and famous entrepreneurs. A famous case is the Dragons Den Bitcoin episode, which have incentivised and increased the recent interest in Bitcoin.

Binance, OKEx, and Huobi accounted for 80% of the derivatives volume in May. In terms of percentage, CME made the largest increase for the month, with 59%. However, market leader Huobi still dwarfed CME’s $7.2 billion market volume by hitting $176 billion, representing a 29% monthly gain.

CMC also set a new record by trading 1,418 bitcoin options contracts on May 28, with PAX and USDC both having heavy reductions in trading volumes against BTC. PAX lost 97% while USDC was down by 78%.

Halving Day saw more trading activities

As expected, Halving Day was the biggest day in the month, as there was a massive spike in spot trading volume to $64.7 billion. Putting this into context, the volume is less than the volume during the Black Thursday in March ($75.9 billion) and a little fraction below April’s top trading day of $66.2 billion.

Reports revealed that the flood of activities ahead of the Bitcoin Halving was the major contributor to the upsurge in derivatives volumes.

In a report by Cryptocompare, there was a remarkable increase in trading activities around crypto options. Similarly, the trading activity on options trading exchange Deribit doubled to $3 billion last month. And before the Bitcoin Halving on the 10th of last month, there was $196 million worth of trades on Deribit. Like Deribit, CME reported a massive increase in trading volume during the Bitcoin Halving.

CME recorded massive volume gains

As investors around the world are looking for exposure to safe-haven assets, Bitcoin is seemingly looking more attractive for institutional investors. Reports also revealed an unprecedented high volume of crypto derivatives on CME last month.

Options, in particular, is seeing impressive growth, with the volume of CME’s total options reaching a new record of 5,986 traded contracts last month. This represents a massive leap considering that it’s 16 times bigger than the traded volume in April. It also dwarfs the volumes of other months since January when Bitcoin was launched on the platform.