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CME Tops in Bitcoin Futures Rankings Amid Rapidly Growing Institutional Interest

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has become the largest bitcoin futures exchange by open interest amid institutional onboarding.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 10:49 a.m. Published Dec 29, 2020, 2:39 p.m.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has become the largest bitcoin futures exchange by number of open contracts as institutional interest in bitcoin continues to grow.

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As of Tuesday, open interest on the CME stood at $1.66 billion, the highest among the major derivatives exchanges that including OKEx, Binance and Bybit, according to data from crypto data analytic site Skew.

Bitcoin futures open interest on major exchanges

CME now accounts for 18.1% of the total global open interest on Tuesday, currently sitting at approximately $9.18 billion.
Skew's data also shows that CME logged the highest trading volume for its bitcoin futures contracts on Dec. 28.

Open interest and trading volumes of bitcoin futures on CME since January

"Institutional investors were eager to trade bitcoin again yesterday after a few days off," Norwegian cryptocurrency analysis firm Arcane Research wrote in a tweet earlier Tuesday.
CME's bitcoin futures products have seen rapid growth this year because of a surge in institutional capital inflows to the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization and its derivative markets.
Bitcoin's price passed $28,000 on Sunday, and many have attributed the price rally to the new institutional money flowing to the cryptocurrency.

CME Bitcoin Futures Institutional Investors

Muyao Shen

Muyao was a markets reporter at CoinDesk based in Brooklyn, New York. She interned at CoinDesk in 2018 after the initial coin offering (ICO) craze before she moved to Euromoney Institutional Investor, one of Europe's largest business and financial information companies. She graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with a focus in business journalism.