CME Group has announced the introduction of new micro-futures on Bitcoin and Ethereum, denominated in Euro. The intention is to expand its offering of crypto derivatives. 

CME Group and the new Euro-denominated micro-futures on Bitcoin and Ether

CME Group has decided to expand its offering of crypto derivatives by introducing new micro-futures on Bitcoin and Ether denominated in Euro. 

“On March 18th, CME Group will introduce a second currency pair on our Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures, futures contracts on Bitcoin and Ether denominated in euros. *Pending regulatory review”

Basically, the new micro-future contracts on Bitcoin and Ether in Euro are designed to match their counterparts denominated in dollars, and will be sized at one-tenth of their respective underlying cryptocurrencies. 

This means that each contract guarantees investors an exposure to the price of 0.1 BTC or 0.1 ETH for a specific duration. 

If the regulatory review is successful, the new Micro Bitcoin Euro and Micro Ether Euro will be launched on the market on March 18, 2024. 

CME Group and micro-futures on Bitcoin and Ether as dedicated tools for the EMEA region

The choice to name the new micro-futures contracts on Bitcoin and Ether in Euro comes from the need to offer a tool dedicated to the EMEA region, given the increase in interest. 

In this regard, Giovanni Vicioso, Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products at CME Group, said:

“Global investors have sought more precise tools to manage their risk with the growing interest in bitcoin and ether. For this reason, we have seen a fourfold increase in the volume of our Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures denominated in USD.”

The launch of these new micro contracts denominated in euros will provide customers with additional products to more efficiently cover exposure to bitcoin and ether in the second most traded fiat after contracts based on the US dollar.

Over the past year, 24% of the volume of Bitcoin and Ether futures on CME Group has been traded from the EMEA region, and we continue to develop additional tools for clients in this region to hedge their cryptocurrency portfolios and express or take positions on potential market movements.”

Even Sam Newman, Digital Assets Head of Broking at TP ICAP, commented on the event, stating that TP ICAP will support this crypto derivative, providing block facilitation services for this product. 

The numbers and expansion of the world’s largest derivatives market

The main derivatives market, CME Group, continues to provide liquidity, volumes, and constant open interest through its suite of cryptocurrency products. In this way, customers can hedge risk or gain exposure to the asset class.

Not only, January 2024 was a record month for CME Group, in terms of average daily volume (71,000 contracts) for all cryptocurrency products. 

Even the average daily open interest for Bitcoin and Ether futures has reached monthly historical highs (23.5K contracts and 6K contracts respectively). Micro Bitcoin and Micro Ether futures have seen a surge in trading, with average daily volumes growing by 43% compared to December 2023.

CME Group continues to expand in the crypto sector. In addition to the current new instruments dedicated to the EMEA region, last September it had entered the APAC region, Asia and Pacific, to launch reference rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Such specific reference rates for APAC have been launched in collaboration with CF Benchmarks, the leading provider of benchmarks for crypto. In practice, these rates provide once a day the USD reference price of the two main cryptos for the Asian markets, and will be published at 4:00 PM in Hong Kong and Singapore.