CME Group Bitcoin futures launched

Now one can bet on the future of Bitcoin on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s platform, as confirmed by the official Twitter account of this organization. On the picture below is a screenshot of how these futures look within CME’s platform (acquired online):

CNBC notes that the trades, as seen from the pic above, had started at $20,000, then fell down to $18,760. What’s the difference between CME and CBOE futures? CME’s contract represents five bitcoins, while CBOE’s contract — one bitcoin. The reference price of Bitcoin CME is using comes from its own data aggregator (imagine something similar to Coinmarketcap), and CBOE uses the price from the cryptocurrency exchange called Gemini.

Terrence Duffy’s Bitcoin futures platform, while not being the first one to work, was the initial reason why other financial organizations started to voice similar intentions. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange always noted the mechanism is going to be compliant with the United States federal regulations on trading, but the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Bitcoin futures were launched sooner than most expected. Since then, it became apparent this actually works. The launch date of the CME contracts was surrounded with uncertainty, as the company once told the December release date was a website mistake.