6 hours ago
CME Group (CME), the world’s largest derivatives exchange, is steering wide of meme coins — adjacent arsenic issuers enactment up to bring much speculative tokens into mainstream finance.
While plus managers similar VanEck and 21Shares are pushing to motorboat spot exchange-traded products (ETPs) tied to coins similar dogecoin (DOGE) and Trump Coin (TRUMP), CME is taking a antithetic route.
“We're launching these products based connected underlying coins and tokens that person a usage case, truthful I don't expect that we volition beryllium doing thing successful the meme coin space, arsenic the usage lawsuit for specified products is truly not there,” said Gio Vicioso, CME’s planetary caput of cryptocurrency products.
Instead, CME is focused connected tokens it sees arsenic foundational to blockchain infrastructure. In caller months, the steadfast expanded its crypto derivatives lineup to see solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP), successful summation to its existing bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) offerings.
That stake appears to beryllium paying off. Since launching successful February, SOL futures volumes person moved adjacent to $5 billion, with regular trading averaging betwixt $75 cardinal and $100 million. XRP futures, which debuted successful May, saw a grounds $235 cardinal successful measurement past Friday and person crossed astir $2 cardinal successful measurement to date.
The products commercialized connected a regular play docket — from Sunday 6 p.m. ET to Friday 5 p.m. ET — with a one-hour regular attraction window. That setup contrasts with the always-on quality of spot crypto markets, which immoderate U.S. banal exchanges are opening to replicate to pull crypto-savvy traders.
Major U.S. banal exchanges similar Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are already respective steps into adapting their infrastructure for 24/7 trading, aiming to amended service marketplace participants progressive successful crypto and different fast-moving plus classes. While CME hasn’t made immoderate ceremonial commitments, it is watching closely. “It's thing that we're exploring, but nary plans arsenic of yet,” Vicioso said. “As we proceed to spot the maturity successful the abstraction and we proceed to spot involvement physique successful our products, I deliberation it's important for america to see covering that spread that present exists betwixt Friday evening and Sunday evening.”
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