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The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, one of the largest derivative marketplaces, has launched options trading for Ether futures products. The CME Group said that the products had been launched following regulatory review.
CME Group to launch options for ETH futures
An announcement by the CME Group said that after regulatory review, it had decided to launch options contracts for Ether futures. The contracts would be sized at 50 Ether each.
The futures options will debut trading on September 12, allowing the platform to offer micro-sized Bitcoin and Ether options in March 2022. The Bitcoin options trading products will be launched in January 2020, while a Bitcoin futures contract was launched in December 2017.
The head of equity and FX products at CME Group, Tim McCourt, commented on the development where he discussed the upcoming Ethereum Merge. McCourt said that the derivatives firm had reported increased trading volumes and open interest for Ether futures and micro-sized ETH futures options. The products could have been launched as traders anticipate a price change during the Merge.
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The executive said that 78% of the Micro Ether options open interest was in the September and December contracts. With this set of offerings, the derivatives exchange provides traders with the option to boost the flexibility of options within their crypto portfolio.
Ether trading volumes signal buying activity as Merge nears
McCourt also said that its Micro Ether options had reported increased activity between September and December. The trend could show that participants were hedging risk around the date proposed for the Merge.
The CME Group has reported a 7% growth in the average daily trading volumes for Ether futures between June and July. Additionally, there was a 41% growth in the same volume of contracts for micro Ether futures.
The Ether trading activities and the investment vehicles linked to Ether have reported an uptick since Ethereum developers provided a tentative date for the Merge. The developers have provided September 15 as the probable date for the Ethereum Merge.
Ether’s price has reported fluctuating prices over the past few days. At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1687 after a 10.1% decline during the past 24 hours. The Merge seems to be doing very little in helping Ethereum recover its ATH of $4800 created in November last year.
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