Bitcoin is holding strong in 2020. We are just over a month into the year and the crypto market has been flying.

BTC is up over 33% YTD while trading at $9,775. Volume on spot exchanges is maintaining its momentum and keeping above $1 billion.

Among the regulated crypto exchanges, trading volume for CME Bitcoin futures contracts is now pushing to new highs. The 7-day average volume went above $600 million last week, the highest since the bitcoin price topped last summer at $13,900. January recorded an increase of more than 250% in daily volume.

CME had 7 sessions with volumes > $500mln in the last two weeks vs only 1 between September and December last year pic.twitter.com/aXV8eprwb5

— skew (@skewdotcom) February 6, 2020

There has also been a strong rise in open interest for CME’s bitcoin futures contracts. Just like CME, Bakkt‘s BTC Futures Open Interest has also reached a new all-time high.

Bakkt's BTC Futures Open Interest reaches a new all-time high. pic.twitter.com/9ve3pdqCtT

— skew (@skewdotcom) February 6, 2020

Retail, however, still dominates the derivatives market for bitcoin as crypto derivatives platform BitMEX manages a daily trading volume 10x the size of CME.

Bitcoin is looking ready to break the $10,000 barrier in the spot markets soon but the futures market, however, is already trading above this level.

Bitcoin March and June futures rise above $10,000 pic.twitter.com/zpUSDWYZCs

— skew (@skewdotcom) February 5, 2020

In the futures market, for the first time in several months, retail and institutional investors are in agreement. While CME bitcoin futures trading above $10k, BitMEX’s June futures are trading above $10,150. The premium rates for March contracts also keep on rising.

Another bullish figure can be seen in the Bitcoin being bought by institutional investors. Last year, over $400 million worth of BTC was bought from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). These GBTC shares also trade on a premium, currently at 11.7 for ownership of 0.00097 BTC. These coins also have a lock-up period of 1 year.

As of Feb. 7, a total of 283,192 BTC are in GBTC, holding close to 2% of all BTC supply minus the lost coins.

With the demand side strong and supply to take a shock with the upcoming halving, the sky's the limit for Bitcoin.

As Hodlonaut notes, “The scarcity of Bitcoin has not even begun to be understood yet. It will deliver many hard lessons in the years to come.”

This also means, “The equivalent of the Dot Com bubble of 1999 hasn’t happened to Bitcoin yet. We’re still in 1992,” says analyst Misir Mahmudov.

For some this scope could be as high as $1 million. If Bitcoin does surge to that level, that would give 100k bitcoiners “Ultra High Net Worth Individual” status.

“With worldwide UHNWIs projected at only ~200k by 2022, this means the Bitcoin 1% could by then make up 30-50% of the world's financial elites,” hypothesis Tuur Demeester.

There are less bitcoin (21 million) than there are millionaires in the world today (~36 million). It will pay to be an early bitcoin adopter.

— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) February 5, 2020

Currently, Hong Kong, New York, and Singapore have the highest density of the ultra-high net worth individuals but with Bitcoin’s another parabolic rise this dynamic could take a drastic shift. Interestingly, Forbes' 2019 rich list was dominated by the people from the technology industry.

With Bitcoin already being the best performing asset of the decade with a nine million percent increase in the 2010s, rise to the moon won’t be unprecedented for this asset class.

Bitcoin price in Telegram @btc_price_every_hour

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