Written by: CoinGlass
In the first half of 2025, the global macro environment remained turbulent. The Federal Reserve paused interest rate cuts multiple times, reflecting that its monetary policy has entered a 'wait-and-see' phase, while the Trump administration's increased tariffs and escalating geopolitical conflicts further tore apart global risk appetite structures. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency derivatives market continued the strong momentum from the end of 2024, with the overall scale reaching new highs. Following BTC's breakthrough of the historical high of $111K at the beginning of the year and entering a consolidation phase, global BTC derivatives open interest (OI) significantly increased, with overall open interest rising from about $60 billion to over $70 billion by June 1. Although BTC's price remained relatively stable around $100K as of June, the derivatives market experienced multiple long-short washouts, leveraging risks were released, and the market structure remained relatively healthy.
This report looks ahead to Q3 and Q4, expecting that under the influence of macro conditions (such as changes in US interest rate policies) and institutional capital, the derivatives market will continue to expand in scale, with volatility likely to remain convergent. However, risk indicators need continuous monitoring, and a cautiously optimistic attitude should be maintained towards the continued rise in BTC prices.
Market Overview
Market Overview
In the first and second quarters of 2025, BTC prices experienced significant volatility. At the beginning of the year, BTC prices reached a high of $110K in January, then fell to around $75K in April, a decline of about 30%. However, as market sentiment improved and institutional investors continued to show interest, BTC prices surged again in May, reaching a peak of $112K. As of June, prices stabilized around $107K. At the same time, BTC's market share continued to increase in the first half of 2025, reaching 60% at the end of the first quarter, the highest level since 2021, with this trend continuing into the second quarter, where market share exceeded 65%, indicating investor preference for BTC.
At the same time, institutional investors' interest in BTC continues to grow, with BTC spot ETF inflows trending upward, and its total asset management scale exceeding $130 billion. Additionally, some global macroeconomic factors, such as the decline of the US dollar index and distrust in the traditional financial system, have also enhanced the attractiveness of BTC as a store of value.
In the first half of 2025, ETH's overall performance was disappointing. Although ETH prices briefly touched around $3,700 at the beginning of the year, they subsequently experienced a significant retreat. By April, ETH had fallen below $1,400, a decline of over 60%. The price recovery in May was limited; even with the release of technical benefits (such as the Pectra upgrade), ETH only rebounded to around $2,700, failing to reclaim the early year's high. As of June 1, ETH prices stabilized around $2,500, down nearly 30% from the early year's peak, showing no strong signs of sustained recovery.
The divergence trend between ETH and BTC is particularly evident. While BTC rebounded and its market dominance continued to rise, ETH not only failed to rise in sync but instead showed significant weakness. This phenomenon is reflected in the significant decline of the ETH/BTC ratio, falling from 0.036 at the beginning of the year to a low of about 0.017, a drop of over 50%, revealing a substantial decline in market confidence in ETH. It is expected that in the third to fourth quarter of 2025, as the staking mechanism for ETH spot ETFs is approved, market risk appetite may rebound, and overall sentiment is likely to improve.
The overall performance of the altcoin market is even more pronouncedly weak. CoinGlass data shows that although some mainstream altcoins, represented by Solana, briefly surged at the beginning of the year, they subsequently experienced continuous corrections. SOL fell from about $295 at a high point to a low of around $113 in April, a decline of over 60%. Most other altcoins (such as Avalanche, Polkadot, ADA) also generally experienced similar or greater declines, with some altcoins even dropping by more than 90% from their highs, indicating a heightened risk-averse sentiment toward high-risk assets in the market.
In the current market environment, BTC's position as a risk-averse asset has been significantly strengthened, transforming its attribute from 'speculative asset' to 'institutional allocation asset/macro asset'. In contrast, ETH and altcoins remain primarily focused on 'crypto-native capital, retail speculation, and DeFi activities', making their asset positioning more akin to tech stocks. The ETH and altcoin markets have continued to exhibit weakness due to reduced funding preferences, increased competitive pressures, and the impacts of the macro and regulatory environment. Aside from a few public chains (such as Solana) whose ecosystems continue to expand, the overall altcoin market lacks significant technical innovation or new large-scale application scenarios to effectively attract sustained investor attention. In the short term, constrained by macro-level liquidity, the ETH and altcoin markets will struggle to significantly reverse their weak trends without new strong ecosystems or technological drivers, and investors' sentiment towards altcoins remains cautious and conservative.
BTC/ETH Derivatives Position and Leverage Trends
The total open interest of BTC reached a new high in the first half of 2025, driven by massive inflows into the spot ETF and strong demand for futures, with BTC futures open interest further climbing, briefly surpassing $70 billion in May of this year.
It is worth noting that the share of traditional regulated exchanges like CME has rapidly increased. As of June 1, CoinGlass data shows that CME's BTC futures open interest reached 158,300 BTC (about $16.5 billion), ranking first among all exchanges, surpassing Binance's 118,700 BTC (about $12.3 billion) during the same period. This reflects that institutions are entering the market through regulated channels, with CME and ETFs becoming important increments. Binance remains the largest in terms of open interest among cryptocurrency exchanges, but its market share has been diluted.
Regarding ETH, similar to BTC, its total open interest also reached a new high in the first half of 2025, briefly surpassing $30 billion in May. As of June 1, CoinGlass data shows that Binance's ETH futures open interest reached 2.354 million ETH (about $6 billion), ranking first among all exchanges.
Overall, the leverage usage of exchange users tended to be rational in the first half of the year. Although total open interest across the market surged, multiple dramatic fluctuations cleared excessive leveraged positions, and the average leverage ratio of exchange users did not spiral out of control. Especially after the market fluctuations in February and April, exchange margin reserves remained relatively ample, and although the leverage ratio indicators occasionally reached peaks, they did not show a sustained upward trend.
CoinGlass Derivatives Index (CGDI) Analysis
The CoinGlass Derivatives Index (CGDI) is an index that measures the price performance of the global cryptocurrency derivatives market. Currently, over 80% of trading volume in the crypto market comes from derivatives contracts, while mainstream spot indices do not effectively reflect the core pricing mechanisms of the market. CGDI dynamically tracks the prices of the top 100 mainstream cryptocurrency perpetual contracts ranked by open interest (OI) and combines their open interest volume for value-weighted calculations, constructing a highly representative trend indicator for the derivatives market in real time.
CGDI exhibited a divergent trend from BTC prices in the first half of the year. At the beginning of the year, BTC surged under institutional buying pressure, maintaining prices near historical highs, yet CGDI began to decline from February. The cause of this decline was the weakness of prices in other mainstream contract assets. As CGDI is weighted based on the OI of mainstream contract assets, while BTC thrived, ETH and altcoin futures failed to rise in tandem, dragging down the overall index performance. In short, funding clearly concentrated towards BTC in the first half of the year, with BTC maintaining strength mainly supported by institutional long-term accumulation and the spot ETF effect, while the altcoin sector's speculative enthusiasm waned and capital flowed outward, causing CGDI to decline while BTC prices remained high. This divergence reflects changes in investors' risk appetites: ETF benefits and risk-averse demands led capital to flow into high market capitalization assets like BTC, while regulatory uncertainties and profit-taking pressured secondary assets and the altcoin market.
CoinGlass Derivatives Index (CGDI) Analysis
CoinGlass Derivatives Risk Index (CDRI) is an indicator that measures the risk intensity of the crypto derivatives market, used to quantify the current level of leverage usage, trading sentiment, and systemic liquidation risk. CDRI emphasizes proactive risk warnings, issuing alerts in advance when market structure deteriorates. Even if prices are still rising, it may indicate a high-risk status. This index constructs a risk profile of the cryptocurrency derivatives market in real-time by performing weighted analysis across multiple dimensions, including open interest, funding rates, leverage ratios, long-short ratios, contract volatility, and liquidation volumes. CDRI is a standardized risk scoring model ranging from 0 to 100; a higher value indicates that the market is closer to overheating or weakness, making it more susceptible to systemic liquidation events.
The CoinGlass Derivatives Risk Index (CDRI) has generally remained at a neutral to slightly high level in the first half of the year. As of June 1, the CDRI was 58, within the 'medium risk/volatility neutral' range, indicating that the market does not exhibit obvious overheating or panic, and short-term risks are controllable.
Cryptocurrency Derivatives Data Analysis
Perpetual Contract Funding Rate Analysis
Changes in funding rates directly reflect the use of leverage in the market. A positive funding rate usually indicates an increase in long positions, and market sentiment is bullish; conversely, a negative funding rate may suggest rising short pressure, and market sentiment turns cautious. The fluctuations in funding rates remind investors to pay attention to leverage risks, especially during rapid changes in market sentiment.
In the first half of 2025, the crypto perpetual contract market overall displayed a bullish advantage, with funding rates being positive for most of the time. The funding rates for major crypto assets remained positive and above the benchmark level of 0.01%, indicating a generally bullish market sentiment. During this period, investors held an optimistic outlook on the market prospects, driving an increase in long positions. As long positions became crowded and profit-taking pressure intensified, BTC surged and then retreated in late January, and funding rates returned to normal.
Entering the second quarter, market sentiment rationally returned. From April to June, funding rates mostly remained below 0.01% (annualized approximately 11%), and in some periods even turned negative, indicating that speculative fervor has waned, and long-short positions have tended to balance. According to CoinGlass data, the instances of funding rates turning from positive to negative are very limited, indicating that the market's bearish sentiment has not concentrated into many explosive moments. In early February, Trump's tariff news triggered a plunge, leading BTC perpetual funding rates to briefly turn negative, indicating a localized peak in bearish sentiment; in mid-April, when BTC quickly dropped to around $75K, funding rates again briefly turned negative, reflecting panic among short positions; and in mid-June, geopolitical shocks caused funding rates to fall into negative territory for the third time. Aside from these extreme situations, funding rates remained positive for most of the first half of the year, reflecting a long-term bullish market tone. The first half of 2025 continued the trend of 2024: negative funding rates are rare, with each instance corresponding to a sharp reversal in market sentiment. Thus, the frequency of switching between positive and negative rates can serve as a signal for sentiment reversal — the few switches in the first half of this year precisely indicated the appearance of market turning points.
Options Market Data Analysis
In the first half of 2025, the scale and depth of the BTC options market significantly increased, with activity repeatedly hitting new highs. As of June 1, 2025, the cryptocurrency options market remained highly concentrated among a few exchanges, primarily including Deribit, OKX, and Binance, with Deribit continuing to hold an absolute leading advantage with over 60% of the options market share, serving as the mainstream BTC/ETH options liquidity center. Particularly in the high-net-worth user and institutional markets, it is widely adopted due to its rich product offerings, excellent liquidity, and mature risk management. Meanwhile, the options market shares of Binance and OKX slightly increased. As Binance and OKX continue to improve their options product systems, the market share of top exchanges will trend towards dispersion, but Deribit's leading position is unlikely to be shaken in 2025. The market share of DeFi on-chain protocol options (such as Lyra, Premia, etc.) has seen an increase, but the overall scale remains limited.
According to CoinGlass statistics, the total open interest of global BTC options reached a historical peak of about $49.3 billion on May 30, 2025. Against the backdrop of a stabilized spot market and declining volatility, the open interest of options has not decreased but increased, clearly indicating that investors are raising their demand for using options for cross-period layout and risk hedging. In terms of implied volatility (IV), it exhibited a pattern of initially decreasing and then stabilizing in the first half of the year. As the spot market entered a high-level consolidation phase, the implied volatility of options significantly retreated compared to last year. In May of this year, the 30-day implied volatility of BTC dropped to its lowest level in recent years, indicating that the market expects limited short-term volatility. This starkly contrasts with the massive open positions: on one hand, there are large volumes of options positions, while on the other hand, volatility is historically low, suggesting that investors expect prices to oscillate within a narrow range or adopt selling strategies to earn profits. However, the ultra-low volatility itself is also a risk — once a black swan event occurs, it may trigger a sudden surge in volatility and position squeezes. During the geopolitical crisis in June, we indeed observed a slight jump in IV, with the Put/Call ratio rising to about 1.28, indicating a warming of short-term risk-averse sentiment. Overall, the average implied volatility of options in the first half of the year remained at a moderate level, without experiencing significant surges like in 2021.
Key Points of the Options Market Summary: In the first half of the year, options positions have continued to rise, and market depth has enhanced; investors are highly interested in high-priced call options but simultaneously hedge through put options; implied volatility remains low, and selling strategies are prevalent. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, if the spot market breaks out of the oscillating range, implied volatility (IV) may rise rapidly, and the options market may usher in a new round of pricing reshaping.
Cryptocurrency perpetual contract liquidation data analysis
Looking at the first half of 2025, the scale of long liquidations was particularly prominent. Especially during several market crashes, the risks accumulated by long positions were concentrated and released. On February 3, 2025, according to CoinGlass statistics, a total of approximately $2.23 billion in positions were forcibly liquidated within 24 hours, with long positions accounting for $1.88 billion, and over 729,000 positions were forcibly liquidated during this plunge. This was the largest single-day liquidation event in the first and second quarters of 2025, triggered by Trump's sudden announcement of large-scale trade tariffs, leading to panic selling in the market.
On February 25, macroeconomic factors negatively converged, as Trump confirmed that tariffs would be implemented as scheduled, US retail giant Walmart warned of future performance slowdowns, and the Federal Reserve's meeting minutes turned hawkish, exacerbating an already fragile market. The cryptocurrency market again experienced a panic-style sell-off, with BTC falling below the critical psychological level of $90,000 for the first time since last November, hitting a new low. On that day, the total forced liquidation across the network amounted to approximately $1.57 billion, with a liquidation structure similar to early February, still primarily involving long positions. Due to the market's continuous decline, long leveraged funds accumulated at high levels were concentrated and liquidated. For instance, Bybit, one exchange, liquidated approximately $666 million in positions, nearly 90% of which were long positions. In terms of assets, besides BTC and ETH suffering significant blows, altcoins experienced even sharper declines — for example, Solana, which reached a high in mid-January, saw its price halved by the end of February, dropping over 50%, with related perpetual contract liquidations exceeding $150 million. In early March, BTC's price briefly dipped to around $82,000, with mainstream coins refreshing several-month lows.
After the market refreshed its annual low on April 7, the overall long leverage in the market has been largely cleared, creating favorable conditions for continued upward movement. Historically, after large-scale long position liquidations, the market tends to stabilize due to the release of leverage risks, facilitating bottom formation and entering a 'post-deleveraging recovery' phase. On April 23, 2025, the cryptocurrency market experienced the largest-scale short liquidation event of the year, becoming one of the most iconic turning points in 2025. On April 22, BTC surged nearly 7% to $93K in a short period, leading to over $600 million in short positions being forcibly liquidated, accounting for 88% of the total liquidation on that day, far exceeding the losses of long positions. The proportion of short liquidations on major exchanges exceeded 75%, and in the context of a sharply rising market, short liquidations can severely amplify upward momentum, resulting in 'cascade-style' short covering. However, on a broader scale, the absolute scale of short liquidations in the first half of the year was generally lower than that of long liquidations: for example, the largest short liquidation day (about $500-$600 million) was significantly smaller than that of the long liquidation day in February ($1.88 billion), which is related to the overall market being in an upward cycle, where longs are more willing to leverage and take on greater risk exposures. However, excessive optimism and high leverage among longs can easily trigger chain liquidations once critical price levels are breached, leading to a 'death spiral' type of deleveraging market.
In February 2025, Bybit once again pushed comprehensive liquidation data to the market and the public through its API, becoming one of the most iconic events in the recent cryptocurrency derivatives market. The direct background of this move is the increasing criticism within the industry regarding the lack of transparency in trading platform data, particularly the incompleteness in the disclosure of liquidation data, which has long led to information asymmetries in the market, affecting participants' ability to identify and manage market risks. In this context, Bybit has proactively enhanced the breadth and depth of data disclosure, demonstrating its determination to enhance platform credibility and improve market competitiveness. The comprehensive and timely public release of liquidation data helps market participants and analysts to more accurately assess market risks, especially during periods of severe market fluctuations, effectively alleviating risk misjudgments and trading losses caused by information asymmetry. This move sets a good example for data transparency across the industry and has a positive impact on the healthy development of the cryptocurrency derivatives market.
Analysis of the Development of Derivatives Exchanges
Derivatives Trading Volume Analysis
Data from 2025 shows that the total trading volume of cryptocurrency derivatives has exhibited a moderate growth trend compared to 2024, but volatility has significantly increased. Affected by the global macroeconomic environment, the implementation of BTC spot ETFs, and Federal Reserve policies, market activity in 2025 has significantly increased, especially during periods of dramatic market fluctuations, where derivatives market trading volumes have repeatedly hit new highs. At the same time, market structure has further concentrated towards leading exchanges, with platforms like Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, and Gate occupying significant market shares. Binance, as the leading platform, continues to consolidate its market monopoly, with its trading volume far outpacing other cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges. While OKX, Bybit, and others maintain competitiveness, the gap with Binance is widening. Notably, since 2024, the participation of compliant institutions (e.g., CME) has increased, driving the institutionalization process in the derivatives market. The steady growth of derivatives trading volume reflects an enhanced demand for risk management and leverage tools, but attention should also be paid to liquidity risks and changes in regulatory policies in a high-volatility environment. Overall, market trading volume is highly concentrated in leading platforms, with the market share of top exchanges continuously rising, intensifying the Matthew effect. Investor trust is highly correlated with liquidity, and quality platforms have become the preferred venues for mainstream capital and trading activities.
Binance
Binance maintained extremely high daily trading volumes throughout the first half of 2025, with daily trading volumes approaching $200 billion on multiple occasions. Throughout the cycle, Binance's trading volume remained high and fluctuated, with extremely high values frequently appearing, reflecting the platform's strong market appeal and liquidity in various market conditions (including significant fluctuations and normal ranges). Notably, during periods of extreme market volatility (such as rapid surges or corrections), Binance's trading volume significantly increased, indicating that large funds and primary users are more inclined to choose the platform with the strongest liquidity for risk hedging and strategic trading.
Binance ranks first in daily trading volume, with a significant head effect. Compared to mainstream exchanges such as OKX and Bybit, Binance has a clear advantage in trading volume, with its market share continuously expanding. For most of the time, Binance's single platform trading volume has approached or exceeded the total volume of other major platforms. Based on its high trading volume, Binance has global pricing power for BTC and mainstream derivatives contracts, which gives it greater influence over market direction and volatility.
OKX
In the first half of 2025, OKX overall maintained a high trading volume of derivatives contracts, with an average daily trading volume of about $30 billion, fluctuating mainly between $20 billion and $40 billion. However, compared to Binance, there remains a significant gap in volume. OKX's trading volume showed significant volatility, especially during periods of severe market fluctuations, with multiple occasions of pronounced increases in daily trading volume, indicating that its platform still has a strong market responsiveness and appeal. For most of the time, OKX's trading volume remained within a relatively stable range, but overall it still lags behind Binance and some rapidly growing emerging platforms, indicating that OKX has a solid user base and liquidity in the derivatives market, although its high growth momentum is gradually weakening.
In 2025, OKX's strategic focus has noticeably shifted from traditional centralized exchanges (CEX) towards Web3 and wallet ecosystems. The explosive growth of OKX Wallet has driven the development of its DeFi, on-chain asset management, NFT, and DApp integration ecosystem, attracting a large number of new users and on-chain asset migration. However, this has also led to a slowdown in the growth rate of derivatives trading volume on the OKX CEX end, with some active users and assets flowing to on-chain or multi-chain ecosystems. Although OKX's derivatives trading volume remains among the industry's leaders, the growth logic and liquidity pattern are undergoing profound changes. In the first half of 2025, OKX's derivatives trading volume remained stable but lacked the growth momentum of leading platforms. Whether it can achieve a new breakthrough through its Web3 business like OKX Wallet will be a key variable determining its market positioning.
Bybit
In the first half of 2025, Bybit demonstrated robust trading activity in the perpetual contract market. The distribution of trading volume was relatively dense, with no prolonged trading exhaustion observed, indicating an active user base and sustained liquidity. The average daily trading volume ranged from $17 billion to $35 billion. Bybit ranked third in the global perpetual contract market, following Binance and OKX, maintaining a market share of around 10%-15%. Its peak trading volume matched that of OKX during certain periods, highlighting its strong competitiveness in the crypto derivatives market. Although there is still a significant gap compared to Binance, Bybit possesses a late-mover advantage in retail trading experience, Web3 community influence, and expansion into emerging markets, achieving higher penetration rates and brand influence in North America and Southeast Asia, and is expected to continue to capture market share from mid-tier platforms while narrowing the gap with the second-place OKX.
Bitget
In the first half of 2025, Bitget exhibited significant growth momentum in the global cryptocurrency derivatives market, particularly in the perpetual contract trading field. According to CoinGlass data, Bitget's average daily trading volume steadily rose to the range of $15 billion to $30 billion, peaking near $90 billion, showcasing its strong performance in the market. The platform has enriched its offerings of perpetual contract products to meet diverse trading needs and attracted a large number of young users, especially in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and Latin America, enhancing its brand influence and user coverage through localized marketing and brand collaborations. Additionally, Bitget has continuously pushed for technological innovations, optimizing its trading system and improving user experience, further solidifying its market position. Although there is still a certain gap compared to Binance and OKX, it has become one of the exchanges with the most potential to ascend to the top tier.
Gate
In the first half of 2025, the Gate contract trading sector showed significant growth momentum, with average daily trading volume steadily increasing to the range of $10 billion to $30 billion, peaking close to $60 billion, indicating that the trading activity in the platform's derivatives market continues to fluctuate at a high level within the industry. From the perspectives of trading volume growth and market share expansion, Gate is gradually establishing a differentiated advantage in the current global digital asset derivatives market competition pattern, enhancing its influence in emerging markets and among small to medium-sized investors.
The platform continues to expand the coverage of contract varieties, optimizing the matrix of perpetual contracts, options, leveraged products, and other diverse derivatives to meet the needs of different risk preferences and investment requirements. Although there is still a distance from leading platforms like Binance and OKX, Gate has become one of the most promising and influential emerging contract trading platforms, thanks to its robust growth and differentiated competitive advantages, attracting significant industry attention.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid has emerged as one of the new decentralized derivatives exchanges (DEX) representatives during the period from 2023 to 2025. As of the first half of 2025, Hyperliquid's average daily trading volume has steadily exceeded $3 billion, with some peak periods exceeding $17 billion. Hyperliquid employs proprietary chain-native matching technology, achieving extremely low latency and high liquidity without the need for oracle settlements, significantly enhancing trading depth and price efficiency.
Hyperliquid's month-over-month and quarter-over-quarter growth rates in trading volume are the highest in the DEX industry, significantly surpassing traditional DEX in core metrics such as active user numbers, TVL (Total Value Locked), and protocol income. In the past year, Hyperliquid has achieved explosive growth from an average daily trading volume of less than $100 million to as high as $3-5 billion, with its growth rate and speed being unprecedented in the DEX sector, currently accounting for over 80% of the DeFi perpetual contract market.
Exchange Market Depth Analysis
Market depth is an important indicator that measures the cumulative amount and distribution of buy and sell quotes at different price levels in an exchange's order book, directly reflecting the market's liquidity level and trading capacity. For cryptocurrency exchanges, deep market depth can effectively reduce the impact of large trades on prices, minimize slippage, and enhance users' trading experience and cost efficiency. This is particularly critical for attracting high-frequency traders, institutional market makers, and other professional liquidity participants, as they typically need to maintain price stability under large and frequent trading conditions. Ample market depth also lays the foundation for the stable operation of derivatives markets such as contracts and options, helping to form tight bid-ask spreads and enhancing the overall market's price discovery function and risk hedging efficiency.
According to CoinGlass data, Binance continues to maintain an absolute leading position in the depth of the BTC market among global cryptocurrency spot exchanges. The median order book depth in the market remains in the range of $20 million to $25 million on each side, while Binance occupies about 32% of the market share with a single-sided depth of around $8 million, far ahead of the second place Bitget (about $4.6 million) and the third place OKX (about $3.7 million). More notably, in terms of the depth indicator for orders over $1 million, only Binance achieved a depth exceeding $1 million on each side, while all other mainstream exchanges remain below $500,000. Binance's absolute leading position in the BTC market depth fully reflects its excellent liquidity level as the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally, while other exchanges like OKX and Bybit still have room to catch up in terms of market depth and liquidity.
Summary
In the first half of 2025, the cryptocurrency derivatives market exhibited strong resilience and structural differentiation against the backdrop of global macro turbulence and rising geopolitical risks. On one hand, driven by continuous inflows into the spot ETF and institutional allocation trends, BTC not only broke historical highs but also stabilized at high levels, with the derivatives market scale and open interest reaching new highs. In terms of market structure, the proportion of compliant exchanges like CME has increased, and the ETF effect continues to strengthen BTC's positioning as an 'institutional allocation asset', leading to deep changes in risk appetite across the entire sector. On the other hand, ETH and mainstream altcoins have been burdened by multiple pressures from technology, ecology, and funding, exhibiting overall weakness, with the ETH/BTC ratio significantly declining, and the investment sentiment towards altcoins remaining cautious, lacking new technological innovations and application-driven scenarios within the sector.
From the trading perspective, the overall leverage structure of derivatives is tending towards healthiness, with the futures and options market scales continuing to expand. Leverage risks have been effectively released after multiple dramatic market movements, leading to historical highs in options open interest and liquidity, while implied volatility remains low, balancing long and short forces. The options market is active, with both bullish and hedging demands coexisting; however, in the context of high positions and low volatility, caution is still needed regarding the sudden risks of 'black swan' events. The large-scale liquidation events of long and short positions that erupted in 2025 not only released market leverage risks but also created conditions for subsequent price recovery and market stabilization. On the platform level, Binance continues to maintain advantages in global market liquidity and pricing power, while OKX, Bybit, Bitget, and others are strengthening their competitiveness in their respective niches. Decentralized derivatives exchanges like Hyperliquid are showing explosive growth, with continuous innovation vitality being released in the DeFi sector.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2025, the core variables of the market remain macro policies, ETF flows, and shifts in risk appetite. If the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy undergoes substantial adjustments, or if the ETH spot ETF staking mechanism is implemented, it is expected to become a significant catalyst for the restoration of risk appetite. Overall, BTC's 'macro asset' characteristics are increasingly prominent, and the trend towards institutionalization and compliance in the derivatives market is accelerating, with leading platforms and innovative protocols continuing to benefit. Meanwhile, regulatory policies, unexpected risks, and liquidity changes remain unresolved structural challenges. Investors need to continuously monitor market leverage and liquidity indicators, dynamically adjust risk exposures, and actively seek a balance between asset allocation and risk hedging in the face of cyclical shifts and waves of innovation.