Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures market recorded a new all-time high of almost 16,000 contracts on September 15. Bakkt announced the news by noting that more than $200 million worth of “physically delivered” Bitcoin contracts have been traded.
The exchange also pointed out that the new all-time high (ATH) is 36% higher than the previous ATH. According to data from Skew, the numbers are twice the average daily trading volumes in September 2020. Bakkt’s 15,955 futures contracts traded for a day beats the previous all-time high of 11,706 traded Bitcoin futures contracts, which occurred on July 28. The records indicate an institutionally-led bull market. Skew also pointed out that that the open interest for Bitcoin futures trading on the platform reached close to $16 million, from $11 million on September 11, 2020.
Bakkt differs from other crypto derivatives platforms, as the exchange settles the futures contract in “physical Bitcoin”, rather than a cash-oriented settlement option. However, the vast majority of the traders choose to extend the expiry date of the contracts, rather than receive Bitcoin when contracts expire.
Meanwhile, despite Bakkt’s all-time high, its volumes are still way behind the trading activity of some of the world’s largest crypto exchanges to date – Huobi and Binance.
Source: Skew
For instance, over the past 24 hours, Binance’s BTC-USDT perpetual contract (with no expiry and settlement date) accounted for $2,65 billion in traded volumes, while Binance’s 74 futures trading pairs accounted for nearly $6 billion, collectively.
Huobi managed to generate $5,48 billion in trading volumes from its 103 futures pairs over the past 24 hours, which includes $1,28 billion in Huobi’s BTC-USD perpetual contract. OKEx saw little over $500 million in perpetual contracts, with a total amount of futures trading volumes for the exchange reaching $2,72 billion in the past 24 hours.
The overall sentiment for Bitcoin’s futures market remains bullish, despite Bitcoin’s open interest dropping below $4 billion and then bouncing back.