In a report published on Wednesday, K33 Head of Research, Vetle Lunde said that July 2026 saw the lowest average daily Bitcoin (BTC) spot trading volume since at least November 2023. Lunde added that for most of the month, BTC has remained in a narrow consolidation range in the mid-$60,000 zone.
Bitcoin losing traders’ interest?
According to the report, muted activity across both spot and derivatives markets in July showed that trading interest in BTC is weak, to say the least. While the daily spot volume across exchanges stood at $2.2 billion, the 7-day average was around $2.1 billion – down 4 percent from the previous week.
Lunde added that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin open interest floated around levels not seen since 2023. In the same vein, perpetual futures open interest stood close to 300,000 BTC.
For the uninitiated, CME open interest measures the total number of outstanding Bitcoin futures contracts held by traders on the CME, showing how much capital and positioning are active in the institutional derivatives market.
Rising open interest can indicate growing participation and leverage – whereas falling open interest signals traders closing positions or reduced market activity.
Over the past week, CME open interest ranged between 95,000 BTC to 102,000 BTC – standing at around 100,025 BTC ahead of the July futures expiry. Meanwhile, annualized BTC futures basis fell just below 5 percent, while August futures were trading at about 0.4 percent premium to July contracts.
Over the last 7 days, perpetual futures contracts showed little change with total futures and perpetual open interest at $32.1 billion, or 508,000 BTC, down 2.1 percent. Funding rates continued to range between 5 to 7 percent, with the occasional drop to 0 percent during some intervals.
The effect of BitMEX shutdown
In the report, K33 emphasized that the shutdown of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX after 11 years in operation was a key moment for the industry. At the start of 2020, BitMEX accounted for almost 40 percent of offshore BTC derivatives open interest.
In October 2020, however, the U.S. Department of Justice took action against BitMEX. As a result, the exchange’s share crumbled to 11 percent by the end of the year, before further sliding down to 0.6 percent in the first half of 2026.
BitMEX’s closure was followed by BitMart crypto exchange’s closure. K33 remarked that persistently weak trading volumes and shrinking revenues were common factors behind lack of interest in BTC trading.
