After the start of spot Ethereum ETFs in August, there was a big drop in trading of Ethereum derivatives on the CME. The trading of Ethereum futures fell 28.7% to $14.8 billion, and the trading of Ethereum options fell 37.0% to $567 million.
These were the lowest amounts of trading since December 2023. According to CCData, this drop comes after the launch of spot ETH exchange-traded funds in late May. This shows that institutional investors are less interested in ETH than expected.
Ethereum ETF Interest Declines
The total amount of swaps traded on CME dropped by 1.16 percent, to $129 billion. But trading in Bitcoin futures went up by 3.74 percent to $104 billion, while trading in Bitcoin options went down by 13.4 percent to $2.42 billion. Bitcoin has done very well compared to ETH , which has only gone up 20% this year, while Bitcoin has gone up over 45%.
Noelle Acheson, a crypto analyst, says that the lack of institutional interest in Ethereum ETFs is because buyers looking for diversification prefer Bitcoin. Acheson said that the current state of ETFs is like the metals market.
In that market, gold ETFs have more than $100 billion in assets, while silver ETFs have less than $20 billion. Even though things aren’t going as planned right now, Acheson thinks that business interest in ETH ETFs will grow in the future.
ETH worse performance is also affected by more platforms like Solana and TRON entering the market. In August, seasonal effects may have led to less trading activity, which may continue into September.
