“Building on our long-standing partnership, our new Nasdaq CME Crypto Index futures will offer clients a regulated, cost-effective and convenient way to hedge or gain broad-based exposure to the overall crypto market,” Vicioso stated.
In 2025, CME’s crypto complex averaged 270,900 contracts per day, roughly $12 billion in notional value changing hands daily. That was a 132% surge from the year before. Last November, the exchange hit a single-day record of nearly 795,000 contracts.
Contract structure
Both micro-sized and large-sized contracts will be available. The contracts are financially settled, meaning no one takes delivery of crypto. They pay out in cash based on the Nasdaq CME Crypto Settlement Price Index at expiration.
Nasdaq stated the index was built to support transparent, governance-driven benchmarks for digital assets.
“As investor participation in cryptocurrencies continues to evolve, there is growing demand for benchmarks that reflect the broader market and are built with the same governance and transparency investors expect in other asset classes,” Sean Wasserman, Head of Index Product Management at Nasdaq, noted. “The Nasdaq CME Crypto Index was designed to serve as that foundation, and the introduction of futures linked to the index is a natural extension of how index-based frameworks support market development over time.”
CME has steadily added products tied to digital assets to capture that demand. CME listed its first Bitcoin futures contract in December 2017. Its product lineup now covers assets representing over 75% of the total crypto market cap.
Ether futures arrived in February 2021, $XRP and Solana futures followed, and the exchange is set to begin 24/7 crypto trading on May 29, just days before the index futures debut.
The exchange is considering issuing its own digital token as part of an expanded review of tokenized collateral, CEO Terry Duffy said during a February earnings call.
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