The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has ousted Binance as the world’s largest Bitcoin futures exchange, according to data from cryptocurrency analytics platform Skew.
With 2,186 daily contracts traded on February 27, CME has overtaken Binance by a large margin. Binance clocked a total of 1,104 daily contracts on the same day, indicating a significant demand for institutional services.
CME’s flagship product Bitcoin futures saw a record-breaking rise in its daily trading volume in February. This volume has returned to its pre-pandemic levels and has risen even further above.
The news of CME’s growth can be attributed to both the surge in institutional participation as well as an increased number of retail investors in crypto markets. With an increasing number of institutional investors entering into the space, CME stands to benefit immensely.
There has been an upsurge in demand for CME’s BTC futures products, due to its liquidity, the ease of hedging, fees, and other structural features like higher margin requirements that cater to institutional investors.
Apart from the Bitcoin futures, CME also offers mini BTC futures, which essentially is a Bitcoin futures contract that trades smaller amounts of cryptocurrency. This product is beneficial to retail investors who may not be able to afford the larger futures contracts of bigger players and are looking to take advantage of the crypto revolution.
CME has also been capitalizing on the growing stablecoin industry by offering a number of related products such as Ethereum futures and DAI/USDC futures based on the popular USDC stablecoin.
