This article comes fromDecrypt, original author: Stacy Elliott
Odaily Translator | Nian Yin Si Tang
This article comes from
, original author: Stacy Elliott
Odaily Translator | Nian Yin Si Tang
A CME Group executive said earlier this week that Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) could soon launch futures contracts on CME.
Payal Shah, head of equities and cryptocurrency products at CME, spoke at the CryptoCompare Digital Assets Summit in London.When asked if CME was considering offering futures and other derivatives products for altcoins, "we are," she said. Related Products."Despite still being classified as “altcoins,” SOL and ADA have cemented their positions in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. At press time, CoinGecko data shows that SOL is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $44 billion; ADA is the ninth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $37.9 billion.
Especially Solana, the cryptocurrency is growing rapidly,
Is the Best Performing Cryptocurrency of 2021
, rose from $1.84 at the beginning of the year to $178.26 on December 15.
Despite the interest, CME will have to grapple with two major challenges before offering SOL or ADA futures contracts, Shah said.
First, the exchange's futures contracts are settled against an index because they depend on prices from five different exchanges; if one of them goes down, those futures contracts still have a precise price and can be settled.
Another issue is regulation. "We need to know where to send the application papers," she said.
The bitcoin and ethereum products that CME already offers are in high demand. Last week, the commodities exchange began offering options on micro bitcoin and ethereum. Micro means traders can buy derivatives contracts in increments of one-tenth the price of bitcoin or ethereum.
Crypto derivatives such as bitcoin futures allow investors to speculate on the price of an asset without actually owning the underlying asset. Investors use them to bet on price movements and to hedge against an asset's volatility.
In contrast, spot markets deal with the real-time price and delivery of assets. There is no contract to buy or sell bitcoin if it reaches a specific price in the future. Transactions happen instantly.
“We’re off to a great start, the products are doing really well,” Shah said. “We launched the micro bitcoin futures contract last May, and we’ve done close to 5 million contracts so far.”
