All sections of the bitcoin market appear to be on a rip lately.
Spot prices have sustained above US$30,000 since hitting their 12-month peak on Friday, while digital asset investment funds are seeing the highest amount of inflows since July 2022.
The derivates market is no exception to this recent bullishness- according to Coinalyze data, open interest on bitcoin futures hit the highest level since May 2022 this weekend, soaring as high as US$11bn on Saturday.
Though open interest has knocked back to US$10.3bn this Monday, that is still around the levels seen in May 2022 just before the crypto winter sent the market into a tailspin.
Bitcoin open interest pulls ahead – Source: Coinalyze
Binance is the preferred platform for options traders, accounting for over 40% of the market, followed by Bybit, OKX and Deribit.
Smaller players include BitMEX, Bitfinex and Huobi.
Bitcoin comprises nearly 50.7% of the total open interest in the entire cryptocurrency futures markets, roughly the same proportion of the actual market capitalisation of the physical crypto markets.
This surge in open interest can be taken as a sign that investors are bullish on bitcoin’s near-term prospects.
Institutional investors are likely the main catalyst behind bitcoin’s latest bull run, encouraged by the spate of Big Money moves into the crypto space.
BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), the world’s largest asset manager, has officially filed for what could possibly become the first spot bitcoin ETF, while last week saw the official launch of EDX, a major new cryptocurrency exchange backed by Charles Schwab (NYSE:NYSE:SCHW), Fidelity, ande Citadel Securities.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was changing hands for US$30,365 on the Binance spot market.
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