There is an increasing focus on futures trading pertaining to the various cryptocurrencies. Offerings by CME and CBOE primarily focus on Bitcoin, though an Ethereum-based vehicle may be introduced in the future. Crypto Facilities, a UK-based trading firm, has introduced a few interesting cryptocurrency futures markets. The following list is ranked by monthly volume for one-month inverse and vanilla futures contracts.
#6 LTC/USD
Litecoin is still a very appealing alternative cryptocurrency. It does not generate the headlines of some other top altcoins, but Litecoin solidified its place in the world of cryptocurrency over the past few years. Crypto Facilities pays attention to LTC through its LTC/USD inverse futures market, even though it is the least popular offering on the platform with just 33.036 contracts.
#5 BCH/USD
No one will deny Bitcoin Cash has become a very successful cryptocurrency. The forked version of Bitcoin maintains a high market cap, and it is also one of the supported futures markets on the Crypto Facilities platform. It is linked to the USD as an inverse futures market and successfully generates 182,678 contracts. This confirms BHC is growing in popularity in this department, although it is still a rather illiquid market.
#4 XRP/USD
The overall cryptocurrency community has no love lost for Ripple and XRP, even though it is a viable ecosystem in its own right. In terms of perpetual futures contracts, XRP’s link to the US Dollar is in some demand. With a volume of 510,948 contracts, it appears investors and speculators see merit in Ripple’s native digital asset.
#3 ETH/USD
Given all of the focus on Ethereum over the years, it is only normal for service providers to issue some sort of futures product linked to this particular cryptocurrency. On the Crypto Facilities platform, the ETH/USD inverse contracts are becoming slightly more popular, thanks to a volume of 634,489 contracts. It is still well behind Bitcoin, but the gap between the two appears to be decreasing.
#2 XBT/USD
It may come as a surprise to learn the XBT/USD inverse futures market is not the most dominant offering on this platform. That doesn’t mean Bitcoin is gaining traction among investors or speculators by any means. It still generates a volume of 857,553 contracts, which is a more than respectable number. Increasing this figure to one million or more appears to be a matter of time.
#1 XRP/XBT
The dominant inverse futures market on Crypto Facilities at this time is the XRP/XBT pair. Speculators are banking big on this particular vanilla futures market. With a volume of nearly 2 million contracts, this seems to indicate some big changes will occur in the XRP/BTC ratio across cryptocurrency exchanges. Whether it will result in gains or losses, is a bit difficult to predict at this time.
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