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The markets surrounding Bitcoin may be incurring increasing maturity, as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is now opening that gates for traders to begin holding a significantly higher number of open BTC contracts than is currently allowed.
This change comes about as Bitcoin’s hash rate just set a fresh all-time-high and may be emblematic of improving fundamental conditions that will ultimately allow BTC to surge to new highs.
CME Futures Traders Will Soon Be Able to Hold 2x the Amount of Bitcoin Contracts
Currently, futures traders on the CME are able to hold 1,000 spot contracts per month, and the upcoming potential increase – should it be approved by the CFTC – will allow traders to hold up to 2,000 spot contracts per month.
Each contract is worth five BTC, so assuming that the increase is allowed, traders will be able to hold positions worth a maximum of 10,000 Bitcoin.
In an application to the CFTC, the CME Group notes that the “increased spot month limits shall go into effect at the close of trading on Monday, September 30, 2019 for the October 2019 contract month and all contract months thereafter.”
This change signals that the group believes that there is room for the Bitcoin futures market to grow, even though its growth has been hampered by the ongoing downtrend that has ensued since its crash in late-2017.
It is important to note that some analysts have drawn correlations between the introduction of CME Bitcoin futures and the cryptocurrency’s crash, but it remains unclear whether or not this is coincidental or if there is truly a correlation.
BTC Fundamentals Improve
The increase in CME Bitcoin futures comes as the cryptocurrency is incurring increasing fundamental strength. This is crystalized while looking towards its hash rate – a metric that is often considered a key indicator of network strength – which just set a fresh all-time-high yesterday.
According to data from Blockchain.com, BTC’s hash rate hit highs of over 98 million tera-hashes per second (TH/s) yesterday, which marks a sharp increase from its annual lows of just over 30 million TH/s that were set in December when the crypto was trading in the lower-$3,000 region.
Because the cryptocurrency is currently expressing significantly robust technical strength, it is highly likely that its price will soon reflect this, which could lead to an influx of new market participants.
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