Institutional Interest In CME’s Bitcoin Futures Up by 450% in October

• Bitcoin realized 10-day volatility targets all-time lows as 30-day volatility drops below 3%.
• Institutional investors open interest in long CME Bitcoin futures spikes by 450% since start of October

Bitcoin (BTC) volatility in a 30-day period realized a historical drop below 3% for the first time in a month. The “extremely volatile” tag of BTC is slowly fading away as BTC/USD pair has lingered around the $8,000 USD psychological price barrier for the better part of October.

BTC/USD pair trades at $8,211 USD, as at press time, representing a less than 1% increase in the past 24 hours. The slow movement in BTC’s price has been the case in the past week or so as price moved less than 2% daily in the period. According to cryptocurrency data and analytics firm, Skew Markets, the 10-day realized volatility is nearing “historical lows”.

Who said bitcoin was volatile?

Bitcoin realized volatility drifting back towards historical lows – moved < 2% daily over the last 10 days pic.twitter.com/XFflXjjNC5

— skew (@skewdotcom) October 21, 2019

The third quarter of 2019 saw a shift in BTCs price as it sky rocketed to $13,000 USD in late July before crashing to sub-$7,700 USD level earlier in the month. The bearish reversal in price correlates with the plummeting of the 30-day realized volatility – from 6.82% in late July to 3.01% on Oct 22.

The drop in volatility is as a result of rising BTC prices in the past few weeks whereby BTC bounced off the key resistance level at $7,700 to trade above $8,200 today. Institutional investors seem to be playing a key role in the bullish momentum on BTC’s price as data on open long positions of  CME’s futures contracts shows.

Institutions long on CME Bitcoin futures

Analysts and traders have been on the edge trying to determine the next move for BTC/USD pair – will the price move towards the major support level at $6,400 or bust through the $8,300 key resistance to test major resistance at $8,800 USD?

It seems that institutions are not in a dilemma on the price movement as open interest on the long positions of CME BTC futures is on the rise in October. Institutional investment mainly comprises of pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, mutual funds & portfolio/investment managers, etc.

The drop in price on September 24^th from a high of $10,000 to $8,000 USD saw a huge dip in the number of long contracts institutions held on CME. Having reached a 3-month high of 1,600 long contracts in open positions on September 10^th, the number dropped to 210 contracts representing a huge 85% drop in a fortnight. However, since bulls retook control of price in the market at the start of October, the number of long contracts held by institutions has spiked to 1,100 contracts, as at the time of writing.