Institutional investors are really interested in cryptocurrency

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) believes that the bitcoin industry has changed significantly since 2017 due to increased interest from institutional investors.

Bloomberg quotes a report released by the managing director of global market strategy for the largest US bank, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, in which researchers examined recent phenomena related to cryptocurrency exchanges .

As reported in the Bitwise Asset Management study, the bitcoin spot market is “significantly smaller and significantly more efficient” than is commonly believed, as the trading volumes reported by the exchanges are significantly overestimated.

Most likely, JPM adheres to the similar point of view. Referring to JPM, Bloomberg notes that if only 5% of the announced in May trading volume of $ 725 billion is true, then the true trading volume of BTC last month was approximately $ 36 billion.

On the other hand, May was the most productive month for the CME Group futures operator for bitcoins – the volume of open CMC futures contracts for bitcoin reached a new maximum, exceeding $ 500 million.

This difference in volumes between trading on the stock exchanges compared with the volume of futures on bitcoin suggests that institutional investors are now truly interested in cryptocurrency , notes JPM.

“The overestimation of trading volumes by cryptocurrency exchanges and, as a result, the undervaluation of quoted futures suggests that the market structure has probably changed significantly since the previous bitcoin price jump at the end of 2017 with more influence from institutional investors,” the report says .

Despite the growing interest of professional investors, on the Chicago Stock Exchange of Options (CBOE), the last bitcoin futures contract will expire on June 19, after which cryptocurrency derivatives trading will cease. At the same time, it became known last week that the Bakkt platform, which has not yet been launched, will begin testing bitcoin futures on July 22.

Publication date 18.06.2019
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