Important points:
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CME’s futures open interest for the top four cryptocurrencies reached $28.3 billion, surpassing Binance’s $23 billion and Bybit’s $12.2 billion.
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Despite CME’s lead in open interest, unregulated exchanges still dominate trading volume, especially in altcoins and perpetual futures.
Friday’s cryptocurrency market crash wiped out a record $74 billion in leveraged positions across the industry. Prices recovered more than half of their losses within hours, but the damage to futures open interest had already been done. The move triggered an unexpected shift that could mark the “end of an era” for the unregulated crypto derivatives market.
As traders ran out of margin, exchanges faced massive liquidations and automatic deleveraging, allowing the traditional Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to take the lead in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), and XRP (XRP) futures. CoinGlass reported total liquidations reaching an all-time high of $19.2 billion, but some exchanges are under-reporting the data, so the actual number should be much higher.
Total CME futures open interest for the top four cryptocurrencies reached $28.3 billion on Wednesday, surpassing Binance’s $23 billion and Bybit’s $12.2 billion. While this is a major step towards promoting price discovery through institutional capital, it does not mean that exchanges have lost their competitiveness.
CME leads open interest, but trading continues on exchanges
Binance still dominates small altcoin futures, with $7 billion spread across BNB, DOGE, HYPE, and similar assets, while Bybit holds an additional $4.4 billion. Additionally, the top three exchanges (Binance, OKX, Bybit) have a combined daily trading volume of over $100 billion in BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP futures, compared to CME’s daily average of $14 billion.
Despite CME’s emergence as a major market for open interest, trading activity remains heavily concentrated on less regulated crypto exchanges, where perpetual futures contracts (inverse swaps) rather than weekly or monthly expirations dominate.
Open interest in CME Bitcoin futures stood at $16.2 billion as of Wednesday, down 11% from $18.3 billion before Friday’s crash. In contrast, Binance recorded a hefty 22% decline over the same period. This difference is mainly due to Binance’s higher leverage, wider use of cross-collateralization, and significantly larger share among retail traders.
The complex liquidation process involving portfolio margins and the sudden flash crash of several cryptocurrencies on Binance triggered automatic deleveraging mechanisms across the market and also disrupted the pricing oracles used by decentralized exchanges. CME futures were unaffected after trading was halted at 4pm CT on Friday and resumed on Sunday.
Related: Cryptocurrency is “on point” after weekend crash: Bitwise’s Matt Hogan
Another feature is that CME futures are cash settled, require approximately 40% maintenance margin, and limit trader leverage to approximately 2.5x. In contrast, unregulated cryptocurrency derivatives platforms often offer up to 100x leverage and accept a wide range of collateral, including altcoins and synthetic stablecoins.
CME plans to introduce 24-hour trading for futures and options in early 2026, pending regulatory approval, which could increase demand and shift trading volumes away from crypto exchanges. But for now, CME’s lead in open interest alone does not signal the “end of an era” for the unregulated crypto derivatives market.
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be, and should not be taken as, legal or investment advice. The views, ideas, and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.