Derivatives trading volumes in the cryptocurrency space hit a new all-time high of $1.43 trillion in December, after rising 8.6% when compared to the previous month. In December, it’s worth noting, the price of BTC surged to $29,000.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has hit a new all-time high, surging 10.79% on Saturday to 20.65 trillion. This is the first time the mining difficulty, which measures the competitiveness of miners looking to find blocks and secure the network, has surpassed 20 trillion.

Morgan Stanley has bought 792,627 shares of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, a company that over the past year invested over $1.1 billion in bitcoin and now holds 70,470 BTC in its wallets.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Crypto Derivatives Volumes Hit New $1.43 Trillion All-Time High in December
• Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits New All-Time High Above 20 Trillion
• Morgan Stanley Increases BTC Exposure By Buying 10% Stake in MicroStrategy
• ZEN, ZEC, LOOM Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Crypto Derivatives Volumes Hit New $1.43 Trillion All-Time High in December

Derivatives trading volumes in the cryptocurrency space hit a new all-time high of $1.43 trillion in December, after rising 8.6% when compared to the previous month. In December, it’s worth noting, the price of BTC surged to $29,000.

CryptoCompare’s December 2020 Exchange Review, reveals that while derivatives trading volumes surged to a new all-time high of $1.43 trillion, total spot volumes increased by 30% to $1.19 trillion.

Binance was the leading derivatives exchange last month, with a monthly trading volume of $451 billion, up 12.5% since November. It was followed by OKEx, which traded $282.2 billion, and Huobi, which traded $269.3 billion. While OKEx’s volume went up 21.8% compared to last month, Huobi’s dropped 7.6%.

Derivatives trading platforms also hit a new daily record last month, as on December 17 daily trading volume hit $91.92 billion. While the volume is significant, CryptoCompare adds, it did not break the previous record set on November 26, when $93.6 billion were traded.

The top four crypto derivatives trading platforms – Binance, OKEx, Huobi, and Bybit – represented 76.8% of the volume traded on December 17. As for open interest, OKEx led the market overall, with an average of $1.8 billion. It was followed by Binance’s $1.7 billion and CME’s $1.3 billion. Top exchanges saw their open interest go up, while that of Binance dropped 20%.

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits New All-Time High Above 20 Trillion

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has hit a new all-time high, surging 10.79% on Saturday to 20.65 trillion. This is the first time the mining difficulty, which measures the competitiveness of miners looking to find blocks and secure the network, has surpassed 20 trillion.

The record high adjustment followed a BTC price rally that saw the flagship cryptocurrency break past its previous all-time high and get close to the $42,000 mark before enduring a correction. Bitcoin is still trading at $35,550 at press time.

BTC’s mining revenue per terahash second of computing power has also moved up to record highs not seen since September 2019. Both new and old generation mining equipment has become more lucrative thanks to bitcoin’s price rise.

Morgan Stanley Increases BTC Exposure By Buying 10% Stake in MicroStrategy

Morgan Stanley has bought 792,627 shares of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, a company that over the past year invested over $1.1 billion in bitcoin and now holds 70,470 BTC in its wallets.

MicroStrategy’s CEO, Michael Saylor, is a well-known bitcoin supporter. Morgan Stanley’s move increases its stake in the firm by almost 500% from Q3 2020, indicating a massive vote of confidence for Saylor and his BTC buying strategy.

It’s worth noting that MicroStrategy’s share performance has generally followed the price of bitcoin after Saylor announced the firm was heavily betting on the flagship cryptocurrency.

Morgan Stanley has become the latest financial giant to seemingly embrace crypto. Visa and MasterCard have started embracing crypto card firms, while PayPal now lets U.S. customers buy, sell, and hold BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC.

ZEN, ZEC, LOOM Are Moving in the Crypto Market

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 24-hour period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with rather liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

Horizen (ZEN) - Horizen is an inclusive ecosystem where everyone is empowered and rewarded for their contributions. Horizen's native cryptocurrency, ZEN, is a mineable PoW coin integrated on major wallets and exchanges. It’s up 43.05% in the last 24 hours.

Zcash (ZEC) - ZCash is a privacy driven cryptocurrency. It uses the Equihash as an algorithm, which is an asymmetric memory-hard Proof of Work algorithm based on the generalized birthday problem. It uses zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) to ensure that all information (sender, receiver, amount) is encrypted, without the possibility of double-spending. ZEC is up 7.2% in the last 24 hours.

Loom Network (LOOM) - Loom Network is an Ethereum-based platform for large-scale online games and social apps. Loom Network's dappchains are full-featured blockchains that are built to run in parallel to Ethereum Smart Contracts. They’re an advanced form of Ethereum sidechains optimized for scaling data rather than financial transactions. LOOM is up 3.41% in the last 24-hour period.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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