The Chicago Merchantile Exchange is set to offer Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA) futures contracts. Payal Shah, the director of equity and cryptocurrency products at CMS, confirmed that the firm is looking at it. She highlighted that CME has received a number of client requests for anything outside the top two, that is, Solana and Cardano.
The two cryptocurrencies are categorized as altcoins simply because they are not Bitcoin or Ether. Moreover, Solana and Cardano have grown in popularity and following, solidifying their ranking in the top 10 by the market cap. SOL, as of Friday afternoon, is the sixth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $44,430,439,797. Cardano is presently ranked ninth, as per data from CoinMarketCap, with a market capitalization of $39,299,159. SOL has seen significant growth and was 2021’s top-performing coin. It surged from $1.84 at the start of 2021, to a whopping $178.26 by December 15.
Shah said CME has to tackle two main challenges before offering futures contracts for SOL or ADA. The first is that the exchange’s futures contracts settle to an index because it relies on five different exchanges for price. The second concern is regulatory. Shah says they need to know where to send the paperwork. She highlighted the growing demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum products that CME already offers. CME just began offering options on micro Bitcoin and micro Ether futures last week. With micro cryptocurrency products, traders can buy derivatives contracts in increments.
Through Bitcoin futures, investors can speculate on an asset’s price without having to physically hold any of the underlying assets. Investors just predict the price movement and hedge against the asset’s volatility.
