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Crypto derivatives trading sees significant increase as institutional interest in the space grows

Derivatives trading becoming more and more popular both among institutional and retail investors

CryptoComapre's monthly exchange review continues to be one of the best ways to gain insight into the crypto market. The company's data-driven report is an invaluable asset to those monitoring the crypto space and paints a more objective picture when it comes to market trends.

The company's latest report showed that trends that were identified in some of the previous months rolled into November as well. Back in July, the data showed that crypto trader preferred small and riskier exchanges over the high-volume, regulated ones.

Exchanges rated C through F still held onto almost 69 percent of the market, despite seeing a 3 percent decrease from the previous month.

Chart showing the total trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges by tier

(Source: CryptoCompare)

However, there seems to be a new trend emerging in the crypto industry. According to data from CryptoCompare, crypto derivatives products are becoming more and more popular both among institutional investors and traders.

Regulated bitcoin derivatives products began gaining traction, with CME's total trading volumes up more than 35 percent, jumping from $3.12 billion in October to $4.22 billion last month.

Chart showing the total monthly trading volume for institutional derivatives products

(Source: CryptoCompare)

The market seems to love trading Bitcoin derivatives

While boasting a significant increase, trading volumes on regulated derivatives exchanges are way behind volumes seen by crypto exchanges. Data from CryptoCompare showed that OKEx, whose volume accounted for 28 percent of the market, traded a total of $91.5 billion.

OKEx's volume, which decreased less than 0.5 percent was followed by Huobi, whose $89.5 billion trading volume increased 10.5 percent since last month. Interestingly enough, both Huobi and OKEx had the same market share.

Chart showing the daily trading volume for derivatives products by exchange

(Source: CryptoCompare)

The most traded product by total monthly volume was Huobi's Quarterly Bitcoin Future WITH $46.1 billion and BitMEX's perpetual Bitcoin future with almost $38 billion. Newcomer Binance's $32.3 billion BTC perpetual future volume was equally as impressive.

Graph showing the top crypto derivatives products by volume

(Source: CryptoCompare)

Ethereum futures, on the other hand, saw much smaller volumes. CryptoCompare reported that with a $4.4 billion volume, BitMEX’s product was the most traded ETH perpetual future. However, the exchange saw its volume decrease 24 percent in November alone. Similar products on OKEx and Deribit traded $2.54 billion and $750 million, respectively.

Graph showing the daily volumes for ETH perpetual futures products

(Source: CryptoCompare)

The $147 million, $84 million, and $25 million ETH products that were traded on BitMEX, OKEx, and Deribit on average are a far cry from the daily volumes seen with Bitcoin derivatives. In average daily trading volumes for Bitcoin futures, BitMEX, Binance, and BitFlyer traded a daily average of $1.26Bn, $1.07Bn and $760Mn respectively.

Graph showing the monthly trading volume for the top Bitcoin perpetual futures products

(Source: CryptoCompare)