The second-largest cryptocurrency on the market, Ethereum, hit a new record of $10.000 billion in terms of open interest in ETH futures for the first time.
According to the platform's data By, the open interest for futures of Ethereum (ETH) reached an all-time high of 10.050 million recently. The previous peak had been around $8.500 billion, and was seen in late April.
Source: Bybt
The significant growth of ETH in recent weeks, which has seen the value of the cryptocurrency shoot up to an all-time high of $3.600, is what is driving open interest for ETH futures to its new record high on the markets. Investors are trading in large volumes on the open markets, which in turn indicates increased movement and growth in the number of trades occurring within the blockchain of ETH.
The value of Ethereum has been strongly boosted in recent weeks by the arrival of new updates and improvements to the network, such as Berlin, which favored the reduction of gas fees, calling again investors to operate within this blockchain. Also, by the effort that developers are putting into accelerating the arrival of Ethereum 2.0, and by the boom in decentralized finance (DeFi), which also marked an important milestone in their history with more than 77.600 million deposited in liquidity. The frenzy for non-fungible tokens (NFT) also have a lot to do with the revaluation of the cryptocurrency.
It may interest you: Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launches new futures for Ethereum
Ether futures on CME Group
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, known by its acronym in English as CME, launched Ethereum futures on February 8. Futures are financial instruments that allow investors to bet on the price of a certain asset, at a fixed date in the future, either by buying or selling said asset.
In the world of cryptocurrencies, the concept of futures is practically the same as that of traditional products. In the case of Ethereum, futures are cryptocurrency derivative contracts where investors agree to buy or sell, on a fixed date, a certain amount of ETH, at a price that has already been stipulated by the parties in advance.
Learn more with Bit2Me Academy: What are cryptocurrency futures?
The launch and trading of these Ethereum-based instruments on CME, the largest derivatives exchange in the world, is also a major factor in the new milestone reached by the network, with open interest exceeding $10.000 billion.
Interest in Ethereum 2.0 also skyrockets
The Ethereum 2.0 launchpad, Launchpad, shows that the network contract has over 4.293.301 Ether staked, from around 130.600 active validators. Since the launch of the Beacon Chain in December last year, the amount of staked Ether has grown by 800%. To launch Ethereum 2.0, the network needed a minimum of 16.384 validators, with 524.288 ETH staked.
The amount of ETH currently staked on ETH 2.0 represents about 3,7% of the total network cap, which exceeds 408.200 million, according to data from CoinGecko. With this value, Ethereum's dominance in the cryptocurrency markets has grown to 17%, taking away space from Bitcoin, which is currently in a secondary scenario.
The price of ether at the time of this edition is $3.520 per unit; a growth of more than 1.700% in the last year.
Continue reading: The arrival of London is approaching, the hard fork that will reduce Ethereum fees
