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As Bitcoin and virtual currencies were in a bear market in 2018, trading volumes plummeted as well. This situation was making individuals worried about companies leaving the space and the crypto market as a whole.
According to Circle, an important player in the OTC market released a new report with data from 2018. According to Circle Trade, the arm of the company that is in charge of the OTC business transacted $24 billion in notional volumes in 10,000 transactions.
The virtual currency expert and analyst Alex Krüger wrote on twitter about this issue. He mentioned that if we assume that 75 percent of the total trading volume was related to Bitcoin, it moved around $49 million each day on average.
In 2018 Circle's OTC desk traded an average of $66 million /day. Most OTC is bitcoin => assume 75% of that was BTCUSD => that'd be $49 million /day.
In contrast Bitmex traded an average of $2.1 billion /day (XBTUSD), and Bitfinex $278 million /day (BTCUSD). https://t.co/g34sC9KoBK
— Alex Krüger (@Crypto_Macro) January 5, 2019
This shows that there are several companies that are investing in Bitcoin and placing their funds in the virtual currency space.
BitMEX and Bitfinex, other large digital currency exchanges traded an average of $2.1 billion and $278 million per day respectively. Christine Sandler, head of coverage at Coinbase, commented about their OTC trading business:
“We found that a lot of institutions are using OTC to on-ramp their fiat for crypto trading. And so we felt that this was a huge benefit for our clients to leverage our exchange and our OTC desk.”
In the future, there are many other possibilities for institutions to have access to virtual currencies. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could soon approve the first Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) presented by VanEck and SolidX.
Furthermore, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, will be launching the so-called trading platform for institutions Bakkt. This would allow the market to start recovering from 2018’s bear market.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.