CME Group has announced that it will launch options on its futures contracts that are based on Bitcoins in January next year.
The announcement, which CME published on Tuesday, stated that as soon as the green light from regulators appears in a timely manner, these options will be available to customers from January 13, 2020.
CME with new attractions for investors
At the end of October this year the company has already published option details. On this occasion, CME stated that each contract will be based on one bitcoin futures contract consisting of five bitcoins. Their prices will be given in US dollars.
In a new announcement, Tim McCourt, head of global stock index and alternative investment products, said:
“Since the launch of our Bitcoin futures nearly two years ago, clients have expressed a growing interest in options as another way to hedge and trade in these markets. We have worked closely with clients and the industry to establish a robust and increasingly liquid underlying futures market here at CME Group, and we believe Bitcoin options will now offer our customers greater precision and flexibility to manage their risk”.
By presenting some data on the performance of their Bitcoin futures contracts, which have been registered so far, CME Group has stated that it has currently noticed an average transaction volume of over 6,500 contracts in 2019 in this market, which corresponds to about 32,500 Bitcoins. Currently, over 3,500 individual accounts for product trading are registered on the platform, and almost half of the turnover comes from outside the USA.
A chance for Bitcoin?
From time to time in the debate in the cryptocurrency environment, the topic of how the platforms like CME Group or Bakkt will affect the digital currency market returns. The very start of the latter turned out to be a huge disappointment for the market. To such an extent that the subsequent decline in BTC was – in some people’s opinion – caused by Bakkt’s weak debut. Still, many analysts believe that the emergence of such instruments around Bitcoin will, however, lead to an increase in its exchange rate.
