The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, one of the leading derivatives markets, will launch options trading for its Bitcoin and Ether micro futures products.
In an announcement Tuesday, CME Group said that, subject to regulatory review, it plans to launch options contracts for its existing Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) micro futures that will be 10% the size of the respective tokens. The futures options, expected to debut on March 28, will come more than two years after the firm launched a BTC options trading product in January 2020. and more than four years since the group launched the first Bitcoin futures contract in December 2017.
“Building on the strength and liquidity of the underlying contracts, our micro-sized options will enable traders of all sizes to efficiently hedge market moving events with greater precision and flexibility or fine-tune their exposure to the cryptocurrency market.” , said CME Group Global Head of Equity and Currency Products, Tim McCourt.
Meet the newest additions to the CME Group Cryptocurrency product lineup ‒ Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether options ‒ available for trading March 28. https://t.co/pPL9JRshkD
— CME Group (@CMEGroup) March 1, 2022
The Ether micro futures contract, which CME launched in December 2021, is 0.1 ETH in size, while Bitcoin futures contracts are 0.1 BTC in size and have been trading since May 2021. According to CME Group, the Minimum block threshold for options is 10 contracts for BTC micro contracts and 100 for ETH micro contracts. Genesis Global Trading, Cumberland and Akuna Capital are expected to provide liquidity to cryptocurrency investment vehicles.
The announcement came after BTC price surged more than 15% from $38,000 to a 7-day high of $44,816. ETH price saw similar gains, moving to a two-week high above $3,000, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro. The price movement could be related, in part, to the financial fallout from the Ukraine war, which has given rise to speculation that the Russian government may try to use digital assets to circumvent international sanctions.
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