According to the latest market data, Ethereum saw an annual record of speculative trading activity in 2025. Below is the amount traded in the ETH derivatives market over the past year.
Ethereum Futures Trading Hits New Yearly High
In a December 26 post on social media platform
Darkfost highlighted that derivatives trading volumes continued to dominate the entire crypto market this year. However, Ethereum saw increased derivatives market activity in 2025, setting a new record in futures trading for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
As expected, Binance remained the dominant platform in terms of derivatives trading volume, and its numbers still put things into perspective. According to data highlighted by Darkfost, over $6.74 trillion in ETH futures volume was traded on Binance over the past year, almost double that of 2024, which was already an all-time high.
Source: @Darkfost_Coc on X
However, this trend was not limited to Binance, as other major exchanges also observed a similar phenomenon. Breaking things down, OKX recorded a new record of $4.28 trillion, while Bybit recorded $2.15 trillion and Bitget recorded $1.95 trillion in ETH futures volume.
Darkfost concluded:
All major discussions therefore converge towards the same conclusion. Ethereum was one of the world’s most traded assets on derivatives markets in 2025, highlighting how strong the speculative appetite was.
What does derivatives market dominance mean for prices?
Going further, Darkfost put into perspective the extent of futures’ dominance in the market over the past year. The on-chain analyst revealed that ETH recorded $5 in futures trading for every dollar of spot trading, an annual record in the derivatives market.
Source: @Darkfost_Coc on X
As the chart above indicates, a spot-to-futures ratio of around 0.2 for the year reflects a highly leveraged market. According to Darkfost, this trend explains the extreme speculation seen in the Ethereum market throughout 2025.
Darkfost noted that a market primarily driven by derivatives tends to be more volatile and less predictable. “Moves tend to be amplified, disorderly, and heavily dependent on liquidations, ultimately allowing ETH to record only a marginal new all-time high of just a handful of dollars,” the analyst added.
At the time of writing, the ETH price stands at around $2,932, reflecting a decline of over 1% in the last 24 hours. After a mixed performance this year, the altcoin is currently down more than 40% from its all-time high.
The price of ETH on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
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