CME Group to Launch Options on Bitcoin Friday Futures

CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, today announced it will introduce options on Bitcoin Friday futures on February 24, pending regulatory review.

These new contracts will be the first CME Group cryptocurrency options to be financially-settled, with expiries available every day of the business week, Monday through Friday.

"We are pleased to offer these new options that provide traders with even greater precision to manage short-term bitcoin price risk," said Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products. "Building on the success of our Bitcoin Friday futures, the smaller size of these contracts, along with daily expiries, offer market participants a capital-efficient toolset to effectively adjust their bitcoin exposure."

Financially-settled options on Bitcoin Friday futures will complement CME Group’s (NASDAQ:CME) existing suite of physically-settled options on Bitcoin, Ether, Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures, providing additional risk management flexibility to investors.

"Given the increasing density of tradable catalysts in crypto, CME Group’s new option suite on Bitcoin Friday futures provides the granularity that market participants need for hedging and expressing nuanced views on Bitcoin," said Joshua Lim, Global Co-head of Markets, FalconX.

"As a major liquidity provider in the digital asset derivatives space, we see CME Group’s introduction of options on Bitcoin Friday futures as a timely, important addition to the market," said Jason Urban, Global Head of Trading at Galaxy. "These contracts offer a flexible and cost-effective way for our trading desk to optimize risk management and provide tailored solutions to our counterparties navigating bitcoin price volatility."

Bitcoin Friday futures have become CME Group’s most successful cryptocurrency product launch. Trading highlights include:

• More than 775,000 contracts traded since launch on September 29
• Average daily volume of 9,700 contracts
• 44% of contracts traded during non-U.S. hours

For more information on these products, please visit: cmegroup.com/bff.

As the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world’s leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing.

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