A brief look at the growth of the derivatives

As the market structure continues to mature, the volumes for both Bitcoin futures and options are seeing growth. Both products hit yearly highs in May; Bitcoin futures traded $558 billion while Bitcoin options traded $3.1 billion. The legitimate spot volume, which excludes exchanges that fake volume, was about $106 billion in May.

In FX and other financial markets, the spot market is always much smaller than the derivatives market because of the leverage that the futures markets provide. Historically, the Bitcoin market has been largely driven by the spot exchanges but with the growing institutionalization, the derivatives are now attracting more volume and growing much faster than spot.