Trading volume and open interest (OI) in Ethereum options on CME updated all-time highs. The catalyst was the successful implementation of the Shapella hard fork, writes The Block.
In an incomplete April, the OI of the institutional-oriented platform grew to $205 million, the trade turnover to $272 million against $94.7 million in March. 187% of the growth of the latter is associated with activity in instruments based on the second cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization. This is how investors reacted to the emergence of the option to withdraw coins from staking.
“Shapella has mitigated the risks for Ethereum by closing the funding cycle. Validators got the opportunity to withdraw cryptocurrency,” explained 21Shares analyst Carlos Gonzalez.
The expert pointed to the reduction of liquidity risk, which is mainly focused on institutions.
“We have seen the largest weekly influx of staking funds, primarily through institutional-oriented platforms like Stakefish, Staked.US, Kiln, Figment and Bitcoin Suisse – a total of 162,464 ETH over the past seven days,” he calculated.
Gonzalez drew attention to the decline to a three-year low of 30 DMA the ratio of Ethereum turnover on spot exchanges to futures – in the latter, activity grew more strongly.
“The metric has remained in a tight range since September 2022 (The Merge). This indicates an increase in the attractiveness of the system, as investors reflect on how Proof-of-Stake and the withdrawal of funds from staking will affect the future of Ethereum,” the specialist explained.
CME launched options on Ethereum in September 2022.
In April 2023, the commodity exchange expanded the list of options for Bitcoin and Ethereum by adding contracts with expiration every working day from Monday to Friday.
Recently, the volume of funds in liquid staking protocols approached $18 billion.
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