Derivatives exchange CME Group has announced that it will launch options on its Bitcoin-based futures contracts in January next year.
In a website announcement that CME published on Tuesday, it said that if regulators give the green light in due time, the options will be available to clients starting January 13, 2020.
CME with new attractions for investors
The company already published details about the options in late October. At that time, CME said that each contract would be based on one bitcoin futures contract consisting of five bitcoins. Their prices would be quoted in U.S. dollars.
In the new announcement, Tim McCourt, Head of Global Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products, said:
“Since the launch of our Bitcoin futures contracts almost two years ago, clients have expressed increasing interest in options as another way to hedge and trade these markets. We have worked closely with clients and the industry to create a robust and increasingly liquid futures market at CME Group, and we now believe that Bitcoin options will now offer our clients greater precision and flexibility in managing their risk.”
Presenting some performance data on its Bitcoin futures contracts that have been registered so far, CME Group stated that it has currently seen an average trading volume of over 6,500 contracts in this market in 2019, which is equivalent to around 32,500 Bitcoins. There are currently over 3,500 individual accounts registered on the platform to trade the product, with almost half of the trading coming from outside the US.
An opportunity for Bitcoin?
Every now and then, the debate in the cryptocurrency community returns to the topic of how platforms like CME Group or Bakkt will affect the digital currency market. The launch of the latter itself turned out to be a huge disappointment for the market. So much so that the subsequent decline in the BTC price was – according to some – caused by the weak debut of Bakkt. However, many analysts still believe that the emergence of such instruments around Bitcoin will lead to an increase in its price.
