Changes in the Bitcoin Futures Market Landscape: Competition for Open Contracts Among Exchanges Heats Up

2025-12-22 16:20:17

[Coin World] Recently, there have been interesting changes in the Bitcoin futures market. The open interest of a leading exchange has surpassed that of traditional financial giants, currently holding approximately 125,000 Bitcoin futures contracts (worth 11.2 billion USD), while the opposing party's open interest has dropped to 123,000 Bitcoin (worth 11 billion USD).

The reason behind this is quite realistic: the profit margin of basis trading is shrinking. The counterparty's open contract volume has significantly decreased from 175,000 units at the beginning of the year, and the annualized basis interest rate has compressed to about 5%, making institutional arbitrage less attractive. In contrast, the open contract volume of a leading exchange remains stable, which is more favored by retail traders—they are more inclined to bet on one-way price movements rather than engage in complex arbitrage strategies. The market is being redistributed, and those who can meet the needs of different traders will gain the upper hand.

BTC-1,77%

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GlueGuy

· 2025-12-25 09:42

Haha, retail investors are just retail investors. If you ask them to do arbitrage, they won't understand, and it's faster to just bet on the rise or fall. The basis gap almost disappearing really makes these institutions a bit uncomfortable; they still rely on retail traffic to survive. Some top players are really making money just like this, and the Bitcoin futures market has been reshuffled in this way. An annualized 5%? That's laughable. Institutional giants should just give up. Places with many retail investors are like gold mines; everyone can see that.

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SellTheBounce

· 2025-12-25 01:56

The basis has soared from the beginning of the year to now 5%, and this is the first lesson the market should teach you. Retail investors are still betting on a single direction, unaware that every rebound is a good opportunity to offload. Just wait, there will always be lower points.

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DaoGovernanceOfficer

· 2025-12-22 16:43

empirically speaking, this is just market migration 101... institutions optimizing for basis arb yields while retail chases directional bets. nothing groundbreaking but the data does tell an interesting story about venue selection mechanisms, if you will.

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