Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange by volume, has seen its futures trading business rocket to a new all-time high today. For the first time in the history of the derivatives exchange, 24-hour trading volume eclipsed $1 billion.
The surge happened today when Bitcoin rose from $7,500 to a high of $8,800 in a frantic six hours of trading. Trading volume at Binance Futures subsequently rose to a high $1.14 billion—beating the last all-time-high volume of $930 million from September 27.
Since the launch of Binance futures’ bitcoin derivatives market on September 24, daily trading volume had initially settled in the $250-$500 million range. However, after the futures exchange hit a recent volume low of $300 million on October 13, daily trading volumes shot up to reach a high of $820 million on October 15. Since the recent high, trading volume again fell to a low—this time of $424 million—earlier today, before shooting up as crypto markets spiked.
Futures trading is classified as a type of derivatives market. Unlike spot markets—where the settlement happens immediately—in futures trading, the market only needs to be settled dependent on the specific market’s settlement date. This settlement delay means that high leverage is commonplace for futures-trading exchanges.
Just a week ago Binance Futures announced that they would be upping their trader’s maximum leverage from 20x to 125x, trumping fierce rival BitMEX, who has long been famous for its 100x leverage. Spot markets most often have no or very low leverage. The pick up in Binance futures trading could indicate that crypto traders are increasingly interested in speculating (with high leverage) in cryptocurrency investments.
According to data from CoinGecko, Binance Futures currently ranks at sixth place in the overall crypto futures trading market, in terms of its daily trading volumes. Ahead of Binance today is Bitflyer ($1.2 billion), Bybit ($1.7 billion) and the three futures heavyweights of, BitMEX ($5 billion), Huobi ($5.1 billion), and, finally, OKEx ($6.8 billion).