The latest yearly high price complements the record high total open interest (OI) volume of 5,311 Bitcoin futures contracts, worth $256 million, at CME. While revealing the info, CME emphasized that the OI spike was mainly due to an increase in popularity for the asset of value from institutional level clients.
Bitcoin futures is a derivative contract which confirms purchase or sale of an asset at a future date and at a pre-determined price. All terms, including transaction volume, is standardized. Back in December 2017, CME Group gained the reputation of being the second big exchange to list Bitcoin futures, following similar initiative by Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE).
In March 2019, CBOE revealed that it is once again assessing its decision of listing digital assets and therefore avoid adding new crypto or any other BTC based asset to the platform.
Of late, Bitcoin futures has seen considerable increase in trading volume, with record high open contracts in June. Last month, CME stated that it was going through a period of resurgence in BTC futures trading. When BTC futures price crossed $10,000 on CME, the price of the underlying asset in spot market was trading at about $9,850, slightly down from intraday high of $9,893.