The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), one of the world’s largest platforms for trading Bitcoin (BTC) futures, is seeing some of its highest daily trading volumes since its launch.

CME is now estimating that an average of $370 million is being traded across 7,237 contracts each day since the beginning of 2019. Although BTC has been on a bit of a downtrend in the past few weeks, overall the asset has performed exceptionally well in Q2 and the beginning of Q3.

CME Bitcoin Contract Volume Hitting Peaks

CME first launched its cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts alongside the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) in December of 2017 when BTC reached its all-time high of nearly $20,000. Directly after these contracts were made available, however, Bitcoin entered a significant bear market period throughout the entirety of 2018 and saw an 84% loss of value during this time.

It was no secret that many investors became disillusioned with cryptocurrencies during this time, many selling off their bags convinced that they bought into a bubble that had already burst. Trading volumes across all exchanges during this time sank to miserable lows, and the extreme periods of volatility kept most away from attempting to trade futures.

It was only after BTC’s price recovery in Q2 of this year that volume once again started to boom. BTC surged from $4,100 to $13,900 in just 13 weeks between April and June and CME recorded its highest ever volume. According to CME Group’s Managing Director “On May 13, BTC traded a record single-day volume of 33,677 contracts (168K equivalent bitcoin or $1.3B notional).”

A High Note

Bitcoin is currently in a correction phase, as was to be expected after such a monumentous increase in price. Bears and bulls are at odds fighting to find a fair market value for BTC and investors seem to be much more inclined to trade futures contracts in a market where the sentiment is more evenly distributed than in 2018.

It is very likely, with so many new developments happening in the Bitcoin arena, that more futures trading platforms will come to exist, and that trading volumes will continue to explode throughout the second half of 2019 in the very least.

Do you believe that futures trading platforms will continue to be a cornerstone of the development of the cryptocurrency market? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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