CME Group Launching Micro Ether Futures Next Month After the Success of Micro Bitcoin Futures

After launching micro Bitcoin futures in early May, this year, the regulated exchange CME Group is further expanding its crypto derivatives offerings to include Micro Ether futures on December 6, pending regulatory review. These Ether futures will be one-tenth of one Ether, which is currently trading at $4,485. Micro Ether futures will provide an efficient, cost-effective way for individual traders and institutions to hedge their spot ether price risk, said the exchange. “Since the launch of Ether futures in February, we have seen steady growth in liquidity in these contracts, especially among institutional traders,” said Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products. With the price of Ether more than doubled since then, it has created a demand for a micro-sized contract to make it even more accessible to participants, he added. CME Group also noted that ever since the launch of Micro Bitcoin futures six months back, more than 2.7 million contracts have traded on the exchange. As for Ether, over 675,500 Ether futures contracts, equivalent to about 33.8 million Ether, have traded since their launch in February. In terms of open interest, CME sits at third place in the Ethereum futures market with $1.13 billion in OI compared to Binance at the top spot with $3.15 bln, followed by FTX and Bybit at $2.34 bln and $2.54 bln respectively, according to Skew. Interestingly, last month, OI on CME went past $1 billion for the first time for Ether futures contracts, while for bitcoin futures, it sits just under $5 bln and just second to Binance’s $5.73 bln. Meanwhile, the volume of Ether futures on CME was between $500 mln and $2 billion last month, which means it is not even among the top 10 Ether futures venues. Here, Binance is again at the top at $10.75 bln, followed by OKEx, FTX, Bybit, and Huobi, recording $4.92 bln, $2.44 bln, $1.66 bln, and $1.34 bln in volume, respectively. Today, earlier in the day, the price of Ether also hit a new all-time high at $4,480, up 510% YTD. [deco-beg-single-coin-widget coin="ETH" graph="true"]