Institutional Big Players Take Over Crypto As CME OI Surges

The Institutional big players in finance are taking over crypto like bitcoin and other assets attract their attention as we reported previously in the crypto news.

The open interest on one of the world’s biggest exchanges continues to increase as proof and according to the data from Skew analytics, the Open interest on Chicago Mercantile Exchange has surpassed the one of the retail exchange Binance and got to the second spot. The move was noted by Bitcoin trader Nick Cote who linked that to an institutional big players takeover:

“Institutional take over of crypto going as planned.

Remember when it was crypto vs institutions.
Those sure were the days. https://t.co/2IEuCstGmn

— Nick Cote (@mBTCPiz) October 23, 2020”

The open interest is a measure of the total number of outstanding derivative contracts like the options or futures that were not settled for the asset which in this case is Bitcoin. The exchanges like BitMEX dominated for derivatives but with all of the legal proceedings against the executives, there was an exodus from the embattled exchange. OKEx OI nears a billion dollars which is a historical rejection point while CME is not far behind from the $800K level. The aggregated OI across the major exchanges hit a monthly high of $5 billion according to the analytics provider as Bakkt compared had little OI with $15 million.

Binance leads the way with 24-hour futures volumes of $4.75 billion according to SKEW. OKEx and Huobi are third at $3.5 and $2.9 billion. Grayscale AUM continues surging with the latest figure at $7.3 billion according to the latest data:

“10/22/20 UPDATE: Net Assets Under Management, Holdings per Share, and Market Price per Share for our Investment Products.

Total AUM: $7.3 billion$BTC $BCH $ETH $ETC $ZEN $LTC $XLM $XRP $ZEC pic.twitter.com/3hYTEDAzTj

— Grayscale (@Grayscale) October 22, 2020”

The biggest trust offering exposure to Bitcoin markets is worth $6 billion which is more than the total AUM of two weeks ago. Grayscale marked Q3 as the best quarter yet with more than $720 million in BTC inflows. The big players in finance are paying attention now as the hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones stated that he liked BTC more than even. In the meantime, Peter Brandt said that this really happened because of the increasing involvement of institutions.

At the time of writing, BTC was the dominant crypto market momentum mover. The total capitalization was near the highest level this year which is close to $390 billion and it increased by more than 110% since the start of the year.