Ether futures are currently trading at a premium as investors make the switch from Bitcoin-based products.
American multinational investment bank JPMorgan has revealed that institutional investors are starting to shy away from Bitcoin futures in favor of Ether derivatives.
In a note to investors on Sept. 22, analysts at the Wall Street bank said that Bitcoin futureson the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) have traded at a discount compared to spot BTC prices during September.
According to CME data, the 21-day average ETH futures premium rose to 1% over Ether prices on the spot markets. “This points to much healthier demand for Ethereum vs. Bitcoin by institutional investors,” commented the JPM analysts.
According to Skew Analytics, Binance is the industry leader for BTC futures volumes with $20 billion traded over the past 24 hours. OKEx is second with $5.36 billion and CME has just $2.34 billion traded over the past 24 hours by comparison. Binance also dominates for ETH futures with a daily volume of $9.7 billion.
In other institutional adoption news, two trust funds based on Bitcoin and Ethereum have been launched by California-based Cambrian Asset Management. The institutional investment products will offer exposure to the underlying assets but cut out some of the volatility according to Bloomberg.
The firm’s flagship crypto hedge fund, which trades 50 digital assets, has gained 76% this year through August, whereas BTC itself had gained 62% in the first 8 months of the year.