Cryptocurrency
Institutions Take Record Bullish Bets in Bitcoin Futures, Shrugging Off Exchange Missteps
Institutions Take Record Bullish Bets in Bitcoin Futures, Shrugging Off Exchange Missteps: CoinDesk reports, “Institutions recently raised their bullish bets in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to the record level set last month amid signs of market maturity. In the week ended Oct. 13, institutional investors increased long positions by over […]
By Chris Sykora · October 17, 2020
Institutions Take Record Bullish Bets in Bitcoin Futures, Shrugging Off Exchange Missteps:
CoinDesk reports, “Institutions recently raised their bullish bets in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to the record level set last month amid signs of market maturity.
- In the week ended Oct. 13, institutional investors increased long positions by over 9%, taking the tally of bullish bets to the record high of 3,500 contracts reached in mid-September.
- The numbers were revealed by the Commitment of Traders (COT) report published by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday.
- The cryptocurrency’s price reached multi-week highs above $11,700 during the seven days to Oct. 1, confirming a breakout on technical charts.
- Bitcoin’s recent resilience to several exchange-related issues may have given institutions the confidence to increase their bullish bets.
- The cryptocurrency remained largely bid above $10,000 earlier this month despite news of the KuCoin exchange hack and U.S. regulators bringing criminal and civil charges against BitMEX.
- Similarly, buyers defended support at $11,200 on Friday after prominent crypto exchange OKEx suspended withdrawals.
- ‘Had these events happened last year, the impact on bitcoin’s price would have been much greater,” Sui Chun, CEO of CF Benchmarks, said in a statement to CoinDesk.
- The derivatives market is now less dependent on exchanges like BitMEX and OKEx than a year ago.
- In September 2019, the two exchanges accounted for over 70% of the global BEC derivatives’ open interest. That number has now dropped to 40%.
- As such, the cryptocurrency is less sensitive to exchange-related issues. That’s a testament to the growing maturity of the cryptocurrency space, according to Chun…”