This CME’s rise to the top highlights the growing institutional demand for bitcoin. Now, the venue is almost exclusively used by large traditional financial institutions, one analyst noted.

Just yesterday, the regulated Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) took the top spot on the list of biggest bitcoin (BTC) futures exchanges. What a massive twist as it replaces Binance for the first time in two years.

CME ranked first among futures and perpetual futures exchanges with an open interest (OI) of roughly $4.07 billion, up some 4% in the past 24 hours and representing a 24.7% market share, as CoinGlass data shows.

Meanwhile, OI on Binance stood at $3.8 billion, down 7.8% during the same period. CME offers trading in traditional futures contracts with pre-determined expiry. Binance and other exchanges offer conventional futures and perpetual contracts or futures with no expiry.

The change in rankings occurred as the crypto market endured a major leverage flush out amid wild price swings, which saw the aggregate bitcoin open interest drop $2 billion from $12 billion. The decline impacted Binance traders disproportionately more than CME market participants.