While the lack of positive jurisdiction may have driven the cryptocurrency industry into a gray area, but the derivatives sector has come to the rescue. It has undoubtedly driven a new cycle of crypto adoption.
The crypto industry has seen developments on various fronts and thanks to the foray of many institutional investors, space has matured significantly from narratives such as ‘Wild West’ or another ‘dot-com bubble’.
Over the past few years, crypto derivatives have played an important role and this was evident in its soaring trading volumes. According to the latest Exchange Review report by CryptoCompare, derivatives volume has soared to a fresh all-time high in August.
Trading volumes of derivatives surged by a staggering 53.6% in August driving the figures to a massive $711.7 billion. With this, the trading volume surpassed the previous high of May when it registered $602 billion in monthly volumes.
Along with the derivatives, volumes for spot also increased by 49.6% taking its figures to $944.9 billion in August. Interestingly, this month saw a period of high volatility coupled with Bitcoin’s price movement climbing to the 2020-peak above $12,300. This could have potentially triggered the surge of trading volume as trading activity in derivatives as well as their underlying cryptocurrencies intensified.
This was a promising sign of the market maturing as institutional investors remained overall optimistic despite several pullbacks.
Besides, derivatives exchanges also saw a significant increase in trading volume in August, according to the report. Huobi dominated the chart with a trading volume of $208.5 billion after rose by 44.7%.
Next in the line was OKEx, which was up by 69.1% and reported a volume of $190.8 billion following Binance with $184.6 billion volume traded after surging by 74% in August. In addition, BitMEX traded $72.5 billion and registered an increase of 43.6%.
The report further noted,
“Trading activity remained high in August compared to July. The top 4 exchanges Huobi, OKEx, Binance and BitMEX represented 90% of the volume traded throughout the month.”
Monthly CME futures contract volumes have also noted a substantial uptick of 36.3% since July as it touched 203,867 contracts traded in August. Additionally, another institutional investing platform, Bakkt recently surpassed its highest-ever figure of $147 million in volume with 12,791 contracts traded on 25th August as previously reported by TWJ.