More than $30 million worth of Ethereum contracts changed hands on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) during the market’s first trading day
Bitcoin fundamentals and past price performance
The launch of CME’s highly anticipated Ethereum futures saw more than $30 million worth of ETH contracts change hands just during the first day of trading. The market opened on 8 Febuary, with CME’s new ETH product seeing 388 contracts traded, and 303 of those contracts speculating on February’s price. The rest of the contracts were split between March (84 contracts) and April (only 1 contract) expiry dates.
Each of CME’s contracts represents exactly 50 Ether, with the exchange setting the minimum trading value at five contracts — currently worth over $450,000 at current prices.
CME’s ETH futures traded for $1,826.5, representing a 1.5% price premium over the spot markets. The data shows that the majority of contracts traded are set to expire in February, with most traders speculating that Ether will close the month somewhere near its current price levels.
The days prior to the ETH futures market launch saw significant bullish momentum for the Ethereum spot market, with its price rallying into new all-time highs slightly above $1,800. The price increase was caused by the DeFi sector growth, as well as the social engagement being at unprecedented levels.
With Ethereum’s on-chain activity and transaction fees skyrocketing, founder of Mythos Capital Ryan Adams declared that “another flippening” occurred, pointing to CoinMetrics data that shows Ethereum surpassing Bitcoin in the settled value on its respective blockchain.
Another flippening.
Ethereum is now settling more value in ETH than Bitcoin is settling in BTC. Ethereum is now the largest network for trustless money settlement.
They say reserve currency status is the last to fall when an economic power gets outcompeted.
1 flippening left. pic.twitter.com/W0Wq65Da25
— Ryan Sean Adams – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) February 9, 2021
According to Blockchain Center’s “Flippening Index,” an index trying to measure Ethereum’s strength in comparison to Bitcoin (using eight key metrics), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has already overtaken Bitcoin by four of the eight indicators, namely:
Transaction count;
Transaction volume;
Node count;
Total transaction fees
The index is currently sitting at its highest value ever, measuring 72.4% progress in the flippening.