Update on Bitcoin Futures

After this incredible month in the crypto space, let’s take a look at CBOE and CME Bitcoin Futures and their evolution in terms of volumes.

In the last month, the total market capitalization of crypto currencies (https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/) experienced high volatility. It ranged from 400 billion USD to 800 billion USD. However from the lauches of the 2 futures to today there is the same total market capitalization of 500 billion USD.

The real evolution of the market depends on the Bitcoin Dominance. As you can see, it dropped to 35% from the 55% of mid-December 2017 (https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/).

Other cryptocurrencies gained popularity and increased their trading volume. The consequence is the lower Bitcoin volume on exchanges with respect to December values (https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/markets/USD).

Conversely, the CBOE futures volume increased considerably (http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures). This is still a minimal part of the total bitcoin volume but it is a sign of an increase of popularity of this instrument.

While the same cannot be said for the CME Bitcoin Futures. Being the second launched futures on Bitcoin did not help and now it has really low volumes (http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin.html).

We have to reconsider this analysis after, and especially if, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies will hit 1 trillion USD. The market now is really thin and it is plausible that big players would wait a stabilization around that level before entering into it.