Key takeaways:
- Following the launch of Etheruem futures in February, CME Group is adding Micro Ether futures (MET) to increase accessibility to cryptocurrency exposure
- MET will join a diverse slate of more than 20 Micro financial instruments; Micro Bitcoin futures are part of the offering since May
- MET will be traded at one-tenth of ETH, which will give traders more precision and allow easier access to cryptocurrency exposure
CME Group, the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange will allow investors to gain exposure to Ethereum via a new trading instrument called Micro Ether futures (MET). The new product will be sized at one-tenth of one ETH and is slated for launch on December 6.
Micro Ether futures will allow traders to easily manage price risk and trade with lower margins
After launching Ethereum futures in February of this year, CME is now adding a new trading product to its cryptocurrency derivatives offering. CME has decided to launch MET after Micro Bitcoin futures (MBT) managed to attract a considerable amount of interest from traders of all sizes – since its launch in May, MBTs have traded more than 2.7 million contracts.
Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products explained why the company decided to expand its crypto derivatives offering with MET:
“Since the launch of Ether futures in February, we have seen steady growth in liquidity in these contracts, especially among institutional traders. At the same time, the price of ether has more than doubled since these contracts were introduced, creating demand for a micro-sized contract to make this market even more accessible to a broader range of participants.”
MET will allow traders to trade with greater precision and to gain exposure to the price movements of the second-largest cryptocurrency with smaller investments compared to the regular ETH futures.
According to the CME’s press release, more than 600,000 ETH futures contracts (collectively worth more than 33 million ETH) have been traded in the past 9 months. The new product will be cash-settled, while the referential price of ETH will be updated on a daily basis based on the CME’s own ETH-USD rate.
