coindesk.com
$XRP futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) recorded over $19 million in notional trading volume on their first day and at least $10 million on Tuesday, data shows.
The inaugural trade, a block transaction, was cleared by Hidden Road on May 18. CME's $XRP futures are available in two sizes: standard contracts representing 50,000 $XRP and micro contracts representing 2,500 $XRP. Both are cash-settled and benchmarked to the CME CF $XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, calculated daily at 15:00 UTC.
Standard contracts bagged a volume of 7.5 million $XRP on Monday and 2.95 million $XRP on Tuesday, while micro contracts did 517,000 $XRP on Monday and at least 1.2 million $XRP on Tuesday.
Market participants see the launch of these regulated futures contracts as a step toward the potential approval of a spot $XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States.
“Spot $XRP ETFs only a matter of time,” Nate Geraci, President of the ETF Store, said in an X post Monday.
Despite the strong debut of the futures contracts, $XRP's spot price remained relatively stable, trading around $2.38, with a slight increase of 0.42% over the past 24 hours.