CME Ethereum futures volume hits record $118 billion in July amid renewed market frenzy

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Quick Take

  • Open interest in CME ETH futures also experienced a 75% increase, from $2.97 billion in June to a record $5.21 billion in July.
  • The following is excerpted from The Block’s Data and Insights newsletter.

Monthly trading volume of CME Ethereum futures recorded its highest ever figure in history, with over $118 billion worth of volume in July, a significant 82% month-over-month increase. Alongside volume, open interest in CME ETH futures also experienced a 75% increase, from $2.97 billion in June to a record $5.21 billion in July, as CME traders’ appetite for ETH has gone crazy of late.

This ETH mania is not isolated to CME either, as total monthly volume of ETH futures across all exchanges also reached a new all-time high of $2.12 trillion in July. This marks a 38% month-over-month increase, as well as being 13% higher than its previous all-time high of $1.87 trillion from four years ago in May 2021.

Aggregated OI of ETH futures is also hovering near record highs, standing at $36.3 billion as of Saturday, Aug. 9. With both trading volume and OI of ETH futures at record highs, the price of ETH itself rose past $4,300 on Saturday, its highest level since December 2021.

Despite this, aggregated funding rates of ETH is currently nowhere near the elevated levels seen in December 2024, the last time the price of ETH was anywhere near this high. An interesting sidenote, despite not even being halfway through the month yet, Google search volume for Ethereum is currently the highest it's been since June 2022.

ETH's weekend rally continued on Monday to trade above $4,350 before paring those gains at publication time. The price of ether is down by about 14% from its all-time high of approximately $4,878, set in November 2021.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry's most thought-provoking trends.


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© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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Brandon joined crypto research in 2021 and specializes in DeFi and emergent, up-and-coming projects and technologies in the space.

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AUTHOR

Ivan joined The Block in 2024 as a researcher. He was previously a consultant at KPMG Canada in the Crypto and Blockchain Center of Execellence where he advised financial institutions on blockchains and tokenization. He graduated from the University of Toronto.

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To contact the editor of this story: Jason Shubnell at [email protected]

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