CME’s Bitcoin Friday Futures launch with 31K contracts on day one

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group’s Bitcoin Friday Futures (BFF) debuted alongside a grounds first-day trading capacity among crypto futures offerings, alongside complete 31,498 contracts traded crossed 2 statement weeks. 

According to an Oct. 1 announcement, nan Sept. 29 motorboat was nan “most successful crypto futures motorboat ever,” alongside nan first commerce artifact executed by financial firms Galaxy and Marex.

The caller derivatives merchandise is sized astatine one-50th of a Bitcoin (BTC) and cash-settled each Friday against nan CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate New York Variant (BRRNY), a benchmark for BTC’s spot price. 

BFF contracts are listed each Thursday astatine nan adjacent of Wall Street markets. The each seven days expiry allows marketplace participants to hedge aliases estimate connected Bitcoin value movements successful nan short word lacking nan request to clasp futures contracts for longer durations. 

BFF Daily Volume. Source: CME Group

Trading desks exertion futures contracts chiefly for hedging and speculation, either to protect against value volatility aliases to stake connected nan early value of assets. 

The CME Group announced nan bite-sized Bitcoin product successful August successful consequence to nan increasing request for BTC derivatives and rivals’ activities. Coinbase Derivatives, for instance, has futures contracts for BTC, Ether (ETH) and different cryptocurrencies. 

The CME offers respective crypto-derivative products beyond BFF. In 2017, it launched its Bitcoin futures contract, representing 5 BTC and targeting organization traders. The institution offers different futures and options contracts for BTC and ETH.