Bitcoin investors might be suffering under the weight of one of the asset’s heaviest-ever bear markets, but for cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges like BitMEX, the mood is anything but sour.
“What market downturn?,” began a press release sent from a public relations firm representing BitMEX, reporting that the Seychelles-based exchange had on Wednesday crossed 1 million BTC in daily trading volume for the second time.
Altogether, the platform saw 1,027,214.62 bitcoin contracts traded for the day, worth approximately $6.6 billion at the present exchange rate.
“Once again meeting our own record of 1 million bitcoin traded within 24 hours is a major milestone for the crypto-coin market and testament to the strong community BitMEX is growing,” said BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes.
Hayes attributed the milestone in part to the firm’s recently-launched ETH/USD perpetual swap product, which allows traders to make leveraged bets on the ethereum price without ever holding ether.
The exchange previously crossed the 1 million BTC mark on July 24, notching a record both for the exchange and the industry at large. At the time, those contracts equated to more than $8 billion in 24-hour volume.
BitMEX isn’t the only cryptocurrency derivatives platform that has seen an uptick in trading in spite of the bear market. As CCN reported, U.S. exchanges CME and CBOE have each seen a steady rise in bitcoin futures volume since these products launched in December, with the two platforms accruing a combined $572 million in volume on the same day in which BitMEX crossed 1 million bitcoin contracts for the first time.
LedgerX, a lesser-known U.S. cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that exclusively serves wealthy investors and institutions, also reported that its clients had traded a record $50 million worth of contracts on the CFTC-regulated platform during July.
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