Crypto analysts say the exchange’s success may lie in its willingness to extend more leverage to traders, but there also might be idiosyncratic market factors at play.Read MoreFeedzy
Bybit, a cryptocurrency exchange with more than 2 million registered users, has overtaken the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) as the second-largest bitcoin futures exchange by open interest (OI), according to data from Skew.
Open interest is the total number of outstanding derivative contracts, such as options or futures held by market participants at the end of a day. Open interest measures the total level of activity in the futures market.
Bybit now has $2.48 billion in BTC futures open interest, whereas CME has $2.3 billion, according to Skew. Binance is still No. 1.
“Both retail and institutional investors tend to choose Bybit for its high liquidity, low spread and outstanding reliability when the battle between longs and shorts heat up,” a Bybit representative wrote in an email to CoinDesk.
Mike Schwitalla, a senior trader at Crypto Finance AG, said one reason Bybit surpassed CME is that Bybit’s leverage limits are much higher than CME’s.
Matthew Dibb, Stack Funds’ co-founder and chief operating officer, said that Bybit has become the go-to venue for high leverage trading of bitcoin futures.
“When Bybit’s OI is increasing, it generally means that retail traders are using heavy margin to directionally trade,” Dibb said in an interview with CoinDesk.
“The other side of this is that in the event that there is a substantial liquidation day, Bybit usually has the highest number of traders and value liquidations of any exchange,” he added.
Joshua Lim, head of derivatives trading at Genesis Global Trading, said there’s been a lot of speculation among traders over Bybit flipping CME in terms of open interest. (Genesis is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.)
There was a large spike in BTC September futures that occurred on April 7, which has been unwound, according to Lim.
Open interest on the September futures got as high as $1.9 billion, but now sits at $677 million.
“Some traders were speculating that it was related to an exchange update that was rolled out to algo (algorithmic) market makers, and others were speculating that it was related to some kind of basis trade being executed,” Lim said in a Telegram conversation.
DISCLOSURE
The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG.
Bessent’s bond-buyback plan fails to curb Treasury yields. Here's what it means for bitcoin and…
The Bridgewater founder says recent Treasury-market stress fits his long-running debt-crisis framework, though he still…
Bitcoin and crypto staged their strongest rally in months as Treasury intervention, regulatory moves and…
Treasury buybacks are not QE, analysts said, but the move helped pull long-term yields off…
ZEC traded above its January 2018 peak as futures volume hit billions of dollars and…
Bitcoin Magazine Smart Money Helping Support Bitcoin Rebound, Says Pantera Capital American investment firm Pantera…