February 8, 2021 | AtoZ Markets – The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group) has launched its long-awaited ETH futures trading. The derivatives exchange said in a Sunday morning tweet that ETH futures will go at 6 p.m. ET on Sunday "for a first trade date of Feb. 8."
Kicking off this Sunday evening: Ether futures start trading at 6:00 p.m. ET for a first trade date of Feb. 8. https://t.co/vc2hkZf9ql
— CME Group (@CMEGroup) February 7, 2021
CME Adds ETH Futures
The announcement of the launch of futures on ETH took place in mid-December 2020. Like BTC futures, the new product will be settled in fiat currency, and its price will be based on the CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate Index. The volume of a monthly contract is 50 ETH, which, at the current exchange rate, is about $80,000.
The CME website provides a fairly extensive list of liquidity providers for the new product. These include BlockFi, Galaxy Digital, Genesis Trading, CoinShares, NYDIG, and more. Some of the firms on this list are liquidity providers for other CME products.
Note that this is the first such product in the United States - before that, institutional and qualified traders had access to futures exclusively on Bitcoin.
In early February, the ETH price reached $1,500 for the first time and even rose to $1,700. At the time of publication, the second cryptocurrency is trading at $ 1,620. Some analysts worry that the launch of ETH futures could put pressure on the coin's rate.
Recall that on December 28, trading in bitcoin futures on the CME was suspended due to a gap of more than $3000.
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