Futures will be the best crypto game in town even after a Bitcoin spot ETF

cointelegraph.com:

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has long been the home of crypto for traditional finance investors, and this is unlikely to change — even with the approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF.

Activity on the CME has expanded significantly over the past 12 months. The CME now sees more Bitcoin (BTC) futures trading than the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance. Open BTC interest on the CME now makes up 24.7% of the entire market, making it the top Bitcoin futures trading venue in the world 

While some of this activity is almost certainly linked to anticipation of approval for a spot ETF, the launch of one or more will not lead to a reduction of activity in the futures market. In fact, futures trading is likely to expand rather than contract when the SEC finally gives BlackRock et. al. the green light.

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There is no doubt that a spot ETF will bring large flows of institutional money into the sector. However, it will not change the basic fundamentals of Bitcoin liquidity. As we know, the supply of Bitcoin is capped at 21 million. That means the futures market is the only place where real trade action can happen.

The CME has been successfully used by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and others to trade cryptocurrency instruments for years, and they have been using futures to do so. Futures remain the instrument of choice because liquidity is the main issue in the spot market. These huge institutional investors could buy bitcoin at any time, but liquidity remains the chief drawback - not the lack of a spot ETF.

Institutional investors that use the CME are also highly sophisticated. As such, any fund manager that takes a position in