The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group is set to launch its micro Bitcoin and Ether futures option. This is expected to start trading on March 28, which is more than two years after the CME Group launched a BTC trading option.
The CME Group announced on Tuesday that, subject to regulatory approval, it expects to issue options contracts for its existing micro Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) futures that will be 10% the size of the tokens.
The futures options are set to go live on March 28, more than two years after the company launched a BTC options trading product in January 2020 and more than four years after the company issued the first Bitcoin futures contract in December 2017.
“Our micro-sized options will help traders of all sizes to economically hedge market-moving events with greater precision and flexibility or fine-tune their cryptocurrency market exposure,” said Tim McCourt, CME Group’s global head of stock and FX products.
About the micro-Bitcoin and Ether futures options
The micro Ether futures contract, which CME announced in December 2021, is 0.1 ETH in size, while the Bitcoin futures contracts, which have been trading since May 2021, are 0.1 BTC in size.
The CME Group states that the minimum block size for options is 10 contracts for micro BTC and 100 contracts for micro ETH. Liquidity for the crypto investment vehicles is likely to come from Genesis Global Trading, Cumberland, and Akuna Capital.
BTC’s price has risen more than 15% from the $38,000s to a seven-day high of $44,816 since the announcement. According to statistics from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, the price of ETH rose to a two-week high above $3,000, indicating similar rises.
The price fluctuation could be linked to the financial effects of the Ukrainian war, which has led to concern that the Russian government may try to bypass sanctions by using digital assets.
