Bitcoin’s volatility drives record volumes for perpetual futures
President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement about a strategic crypto reserve triggered an aggressive wave of volatility in the market. Bitcoin’s abrupt spikes and drops in the past several days had a pronounced effect on the futures market, driving trading volumes, shifts in open interests, and large-scale liquidations.
Bitcoin’s perpetual futures (perps) overwhelmingly dominated trading activity compared to quarterly delivery futures. On the day of the announcement, perpetual swap volumes were one to two orders of magnitude higher than volumes for any fixed-expiry futures.
For instance, Binance’s BTC perpetual contract alone traded on the order of roughly $42 billion in 24-hour volume (far surpassing any other venue), according to Coinglass data. In contrast, no quarterly futures contract reached more than $200 million in volume.
Data from CoinGlass showed that major exchanges’ perpetual BTC pairs, each trading tens of billions of perps, account for the vast majority of the $159B+ futures volume on this volatile day. This disparity highlights that traders overwhelmingly favor perpetual swaps for Bitcoin exposure.
Perpetual futures offer greater flexibility and liquidity than quarterly futures. They never expire, so traders can hold positions without worrying about rolling over contracts or expiration dates. This makes perps ideal for short-term speculation and continuous high-leverage trading. Funding rate payments every 8 hours keep perps tethered to spot prices, but otherwise, traders face no settlement, attracting more participation.
In contrast, quarterly futures have a fixed expiry/settlement; they are used more by longer-term hedgers or arbitrageurs and see lower speculative interest. As a result, perps have become the “dominant force” in crypto derivatives, routinely accounting for well over 80% to 90% of Bitcoin futures volume.
The Trump news induced extreme volatility that spiked futures trading across the board. Bitcoin’s roughly 10% price jolt was accompanied by a surge in futures volumes, open interest, and trade counts on major exchanges.
Total BTC futures volume jumped to enormous levels — on the order of $150–160 billion in 24 hours (across all exchanges), which is significantly above normal. This was an over 7% increase from the previous day’s volume, which was already elevated, per derivatives data. Major venues like Binance, Bybit, OKX, and Bitget all saw record activity.
For example, Binance’s futures platform processed roughly 17.3 million BTC trades during the 24 hours around the announcement (versus its usual daily trade count in the single-digit millions), while Bybit saw approximately 6.8M trades and OKX about 4.0M, indicating how frantic trading became. Such a dramatic increase in trade count reflects algorithmic and high-frequency traders piling in and manual traders reacting en masse.
Open interest (OI) also swung sharply. Immediately as prices surged, OI was initially flat or only modestly changed, suggesting the rally was driven by short-term covering and spot buying rather than new longs. Many short sellers closed positions (reducing OI) while an influx of long orders filled their place, resulting in little net change at first.
However, as the volatility continued, open interest began climbing — traders opened new positions to ride the momentum or hedge. Within 24 hours, total BTC futures OI grew about 5% to 7%, rising from roughly $51 billion to $54.64 billion. Open interest expanded after the announcement, indicating additional money flowed into futures after the initial shock (likely as traders positioned for the next move).
Trader positioning before and after the announcement shifted dramatically. For most of last week, sentiment was relatively bearish/neutral — many traders were positioned short, expecting continued price weakness. The fact that short liquidations dominated the initial move (2.4x the long liquidations on BTC) shows traders anticipated a price decline and were unprepared for the rally.
Different exchanges saw varying impacts during this turmoil, mainly reflecting their clientele and mechanics. Binance, the largest crypto futures exchange, unsurprisingly led in activity — accounting for the single greatest share of volume and open interest.
During the surge, Binance’s BTC perpetual volume ($51 billion) was roughly double that of the next-largest venue. It also maintained the highest open interest (about 35% to 40% of the total market). This suggests that Binance traders (a mix of retail and larger players) were extremely active and added significantly to positions.
Meanwhile, due to its schedule, the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) – a regulated venue for institutional futures – had a very different reaction. The Trump announcement came over the weekend when CME’s Bitcoin futures were closed. When CME opened for trading on Monday, it gapped up dramatically.
The March CME BTC contract opened around $95,000 (up from about $85,720 on Friday’s close), creating a record gap of over $9,200. This shows how much spot prices moved in the interim. CME’s volume and open interest also jumped as institutional traders reacted to the news, but CME’s overall share remains smaller compared to the crypto-native exchanges.
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