Key takeaways:
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CME’s futures open interest in 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 volumes, especially in altcoin and perpetual futures.
Friday’s cryptocurrency market crash wiped out a record $74 billion in leveraged positions across the industry. Although prices recovered more than half of the losses within a few hours, the damage to futures open interest had already been done. The movement triggered an unexpected shift that could mark the “end of an era” for unregulated cryptocurrency derivatives markets.
Exchanges faced massive liquidations and auto-deleveraging as traders’ margins fell short, allowing the traditional Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to take the lead in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP) futures. Total liquidations reported by CoinGlass reached a record-high $19.2 billion, while the effective number should be far higher as some exchanges underreport their data.
Aggregate CME futures open interest in the top four cryptocurrencies reached $28.3 billion on Wednesday, surpassing Binance’s $23 billion and Bybit’s $12.2 billion. While this marks a major step toward institutional capital driving price discovery, it doesn’t mean exchanges have lost their competitive edge.
CME leads open interest, but trading stays on exchanges
Binance still dominates smaller altcoin futures with $7 billion spread across (BNB), (DOGE), (HYPE) and similar assets, while Bybit holds another $4.4 billion. In addition, the top three exchanges — Binance, OKX, and Bybit — collectively trade over $100 billion per day in BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP futures, compared with CME’s $14 billion daily average.
Even as CME emerges as the leading market in open interest, trading activity remains heavily concentrated on lesser-regulated cryptocurrency exchanges, where perpetual futures contracts (inverse swaps) dominate instead of weekly or monthly expiries.
Bitcoin futures open interest at CME stood at $16.2 billion on Wednesday, down 11% from $18.3 billion before Friday’s crash. By contrast, Binance saw a sharper 22% drop over the same period. The difference largely stems from Binance’s higher leverage, broader use of cross-collateral, and its significantly larger share of retail traders.
The complex liquidation process tied to portfolio margin and the sudden flash crash in several cryptocurrencies on Binance triggered auto-deleverage mechanisms across the broader market, also disrupting pricing oracles used by decentralized exchanges. CME futures were unaffected since trading halts at 4:00 pm Central Time on Friday and resumes on Sunday.
Related: Crypto ‘got a passing grade’ on weekend crash: Bitwise’s Matt Hougan
Another distinction is that CME futures are cash-settled and require a maintenance margin of around 40%, roughly limiting traders to 2.5x leverage. 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, a move that could drive greater demand and potentially shift trading volumes away from crypto exchanges. For now, however, CME’s lead in open interest alone doesn’t signal the “end of an era” for unregulated cryptocurrency derivatives markets.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
