CME Group to Offer Micro Crypto Options After Introducing Futures

CME Group, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, wants to start trading options on micro bitcoin and ether futures this month.

• The company, which overtook Binance as the world’s biggest bitcoin futures platform in October, plans to introduce the options on March 28 pending regulatory approval.
• The contracts will be one-tenth of their respective underlying tokens in size, CME Group said in a statement Tuesday. They are set to add to CME’s suite of micro bitcoin and micro ether futures, launched last year.
• The exchange introduced micro bitcoin futures in May 2021, adding the ether contracts in December.
• "At less than a year old, nearly 5.2 million combined Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures contracts have changed hands,” Tim McCourt, global head of equity and FX Products at CME Group said in the statement. He noted that the “micro-sized options will enable traders of all sizes to efficiently hedge market-moving events with greater precision and flexibility or fine-tune their cryptocurrency market exposure.”
• In February, CME reported fourth-quarter 2021 average daily volume of 20.5 million contracts, up 26% from fourth quarter 2020.
• Options provide a trader with the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an asset at a specified price at any period during the life of the contract. Futures contracts give the buyer the obligation to purchase an asset at the specified date unless the position is closed beforehand.

Read more: CME Takes Over as Largest Bitcoin Futures Exchange as BITO Pushes Limits