The Chicago Mercantile Trade Group (CME) has revealed that within the first month of the yr, its crypto contracts noticed a median every day quantity (ADV) of 198,000 with a notional worth of $13.6 billion.
The CME detailed in a press launch on Tuesday that year-over-year, its cryptocurrency ADV rose 180% as its micro bitcoin (BTC) futures registered a 255% rise, whereas its micro ether (ETH) futures contracts jumped 223%.
Whereas the trade’s bitcoin and ether futures contracts have a notional worth of 5 BTC and 50 ETH, respectively, their micro contracts signify simply 0.1 of every cryptocurrency, permitting for extra exact buying and selling and threat administration given their smaller measurement.
On prime of its full-sized and micro contracts for the highest two cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, the CME additionally gives merchants choices on these contracts. These choices allow extra advanced methods to fine-tune their threat publicity.
Choices contracts present merchants with the correct, however not the duty, to purchase or promote cryptocurrency futures at a predetermined worth on or earlier than a selected date.
The futures trade recorded a complete ADV of 25.7 million contracts in January.
Simply final week, the CME Group introduced it’s eyeing the introduction of choices on Bitcoin Friday Futures (BFF) from Feb. 24, though these are pending regulatory approval.