Key Points
- Bitcoin spot trading volumes reached a 16-month high on Feb. 28, with Binance leading the charge.
- Bitcoin derivatives saw nearly $200 billion in trading, while spot BTC ETFs continued to see daily net inflows.
Bitcoin spot trading volumes on centralized exchanges have hit a high not seen since the FTX crash, driven by strong demand for ETFs that invest in the leading cryptocurrency.
Record Trading Volumes
On Feb. 28, spot trading volumes for Bitcoin (BTC) surged to a 16-month high, with $34 billion worth of trades on CEXs, according to data from Kaiko. Binance was the top BTC trading platform on the day, recording over $17 billion in Bitcoin trading volume.
Bybit followed with $3.5 billion, while Coinbase nearly hit $3 billion, despite experiencing a surge in traffic and technical issues. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the exchange had prepared for 10 times its usual traffic, but this was not enough to manage the increased interest in the top cryptocurrency by market cap.
OKX and Kraken saw almost $4 billion in Bitcoin spot trading as BTC’s value surged over 10% beyond $64,000 before falling back to around $62,000.
Bitcoin Derivatives and Spot BTC ETFs
According to Laevitas data, traders also heavily invested in crypto derivative products. BTC derivatives saw $182 billion in trading volume in the past 24 hours, making up 94% of the $358 billion traded across all crypto derivatives, including futures, perpetual contracts, and options.
Total notional options open interest reached an all-time high of $26 billion on the crypto exchange Deribit, further demonstrating the huge demand for digital asset derivatives.
Spot BTC ETFs also saw another day of net inflows, led by BlackRock. Of these products, nine recorded $673 million in total daily net inflows, with BlackRock setting a new single-day record of $612 million, as reported by SoSoValue.
Grayscale experienced $216 million in outflows as its converted GBTC ETF continued to see daily exits. In less than two months, investors have traded over $7 billion in spot Bitcoin ETFs.
