Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin Traders Move to Perpetual Contracts as Risk-Free Return Ends
- Perpetual futures have become favored product among traders
- Perps make up 66% of open interest and 93% of trade volume
This article is for subscribers only.
Interest in Bitcoin has waned since the golden days of 2021, with prices and volume slumping, and online searches nosediving. But one corner of the derivatives market has been a standout.
Bitcoin perpetual contracts -- which, unlike traditional calendar futures, don’t expire -- have long been a crypto retail-investor favorite, with a bigger number of professional and institutional traders also shifting toward them and away from traditional calendar futures. Such contracts have grown to account for around 66% of open interest and roughly 93% of trading volume, according to data from Glassnode.