When Bitcoin is dull with liquidity ebbing for many in the get-rich-quick community, trading in the biggest blockchain derivatives is booming.
According to figures from information trackers Skew and BitcoinTradeVolume.com, the sum of futures exchanged internationally exceeds Bitcoin spot volume by 10 to 18-fold at $5 billion to $10 billion a day.
At the beginning of the year, the volumes were about equal, with definitive figures for both being difficult to come by from exchanges.
Leading the charge are Asian-based exchanges such as BitMex and Binance that sell Bitcoin futures contracts and smaller coins that can be leveraged more than 100 times and often on an ongoing basis.
That's particularly appealing to investors still stung by Bitcoin's approximately 60 percent fall since late 2017 and hindered by the sometimes thin volatility arising from Bitcoin's "whales" buy-and-hold that held more than a quarter of the decade-old digital assets.
Traditional financial markets are starting to reflect on the new trend more strongly, though volatility is an obvious indicator of such maturity.
Bitcoin's risk measure shows a significant decrease in price fluctuations over time. Of note, it is still highly volatile compared to most fiat currencies, and there are still peaks and troughs.
For example, when Bitcoin unexpectedly jumped over $13,000 in June. For the most part, though, 2019 witnessed extended periods occurring without the sorts of major fluctuations that have been characteristic of most of the lifespan of Bitcoin.
This year, the hegemony of Bitcoin has also risen to unprecedented heights since prior to the 2017 Initial Coin Offering boom. Early last month -- for the first time in almost two and a half years -- Bitcoin was responsible for more than 70 percent of all digital currency market cap.
Such influence is quite surprising, considering that around these periods there were many altcoins than the pre-boom bitcoin, which means traders are shying away from altcoins in favor of bitcoin.
Since companies favor bitcoin as a more 'evolved' piece of a financial commodity compared to altcoins, the increase of social interest in the crypto over the years accounts for that.
Grayscale Investment information shows Bitcoin's corporate choice. The distributor for cryptocurrency investment products recently published a quarterly report revealing an increase in Bitcoin's retail expenditure this year.
One draw for retail traders and investors is the growing emergence of derivative products from cryptocurrencies, which provide similar vehicles to those on traditional financial markets.
These are still relatively new, despite the fact that the first cash-settled Bitcoin contracts for investors were launched by CME and CBOE at the end of 2017.
CME has announced that Bitcoin futures hit a record selling month in May, and it had recorded over 2 million contracts by July.
