Market Analysis Report (19 Aug 2022)

On Thursday, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace CME Group announced that it “plans to launch options on Ether futures on September 12, pending regulatory review.” On 12 November 2019, CME Group (“CME”), announced that options on its Bitcoin futures contracts would be launching on 13 January 2020. It now appears that CME Group has a new similar product for Ethereum.

The announcement marks the latest expansion of CME Group’s existing suite of cryptocurrency options contracts, which also includes Bitcoin options, as well as micro-sized Bitcoin and Ether options. These new contracts will deliver one ether future (sized at 50 ether per contract) and are based on the CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate.

Since their launch, CME Group’s standard and micro-sized Ether futures contracts have experienced significant growth and consistent liquidity, volume, and open interest for clients. In July, the average daily volume (ADV) was 7.9K contracts and open interest (OI) of 3.9K contracts. July OI represented an increase of more than 7% over June.

“The launch of these new options contracts builds on the significant growth and deep liquidity we have seen in our existing Ether futures, which have traded more than 1.8 million contracts to date,” said Tim McCourt, Global Head of Equity and FX Products, CME Group. As we approach the highly anticipated Ethereum Merge next month, we continue to see market participants turn to CME Group to manage ether price risk.”