K33 says July BTC spot volume is averaging just $2.2B daily, its lowest since Nov. 2023, as CME open interest, perp activity, and funding rates all stay subdued.
Bitcoin Market News
Bitcoin (BTC) is heading for its quietest month in trading activity since November 2023, according to research firm K33.
The firm's head of research, Vetle Lunde, published those findings in a report on July 29. Average daily spot volume across exchanges tracked by K33 came in at $2.2 billion for July, with the seven-day average sitting at $2.1 billion, down 4% from the prior week.
BTC fell 3% over the past week and was trading at around $63,300 at the time of the report. The asset had briefly moved above $64,000 on July 29. Price movement remained inside a narrow consolidation range, with no significant breakout in either direction.
Derivatives Markets Reflect the Same Quiet
Activity across derivatives markets told the same story as spot. CME Bitcoin open interest stayed near multi-year lows, ranging between 95,000 BTC and 102,000 BTC over the past week. It stood at 100,025 BTC going into the July futures expiry. The annualized Bitcoin futures basis drifted to just below 5%. August contracts traded at a 0.4% premium to July.
Perpetual futures open interest held around 300,000 BTC for the month. Total open interest across futures and perpetuals combined reached $32.1 billion, or 508,000 BTC, down 2.1% over seven days. Funding rates held mostly between 5% and 7%. They briefly approached 0% during several trading intervals. The one-month 25-delta options skew fell to 6.28 on July 23, its lowest reading in six months, before recovering after BTC pulled back.
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BitMEX Closure Ends an 11-Year Run
K33's report also covered the planned shutdown of BitMEX, the exchange that introduced perpetual swaps to crypto markets more than a decade ago. At the start of 2020, BitMEX held roughly 40% of offshore Bitcoin derivatives open interest. US Department of Justice action against the platform in October 2020 triggered a rapid decline. Its market share dropped to 11% by the end of that year and kept falling, reaching 0.6% by the first half of 2026.
At its highest point on May 12, 2020, BitMEX's rolling 365-day inverse perpetual volume exceeded $1 trillion. K33 estimated that volume level had generated around $500 million in annual revenue under a 0.05% fee assumption. The exchange's insurance fund peaked at more than 36,000 BTC before it was reduced to 3,600 BTC in November 2025.
BitMEX joins BitMart and AscendEX in announcing shutdowns. K33 linked all three closures to the same underlying conditions: persistently weak volumes and revenues that could no longer sustain operations. The K33 report was published ahead of a Federal Reserve rate decision. Markets were last pricing a 66.3% probability that the Fed holds rates steady, with a 33.7% chance of a 25-basis-point hike.
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