As of Wednesday morning, the price of one Bitcoin had passed $7,500.
Chart via https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/
Last week, bitcoin surged to another record after CME Group Inc., the world’s largest exchange owner, said it plans to launch bitcoin futures before the end of this year. CME’s launch of bitcoin futures in the fourth quarter of 2017 will be pending all relevant regulatory review periods.
The new contract will be cash-settled, based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR) which serves as a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. Bitcoin futures will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME.
CME rival Cboe Global Makets Inc. is also in the race to launch bitcoin futures.
“Cboe announced in August that it wanted to offer the contracts, which would use Gemini bitcoin market data, by the end of this year or early next year. Each company needs approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission,” reports Bloomberg.
Related: A Bitcoin ETF Will Likely Be Backed by Futures
CME Group and Crypto Facilities Ltd. also publish the CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index (BRTI) to provide price transparency to the spot bitcoin market. The BRTI combines global demand to buy and sell bitcoin into a consolidated order book and reflects the fair, instantaneous U.S. dollar price of bitcoin in a spot price. The BRTI is published in real time and is suitable for marking portfolios, executing intra-day bitcoin transactions and risk management.
Adding to the momentum for a bitcoin ETF, a pair of issuers recently filed plans for blockchain ETFs. Earlier this month, Amplify ETFs, the exchange traded funds issuer behind the Amplify Online Retail ETF (NasdaqGM: IBUY), among other products, revealed plans for the Amplify Blockchain Leaders ETF. Blockchain is the centralized record of transaction data for cryptocurrencies.
“Exchanges are catering to customers clamoring to trade cryptocurrency-related products at a venue they are familiar and comfortable with. The creation of exchange-traded funds could be a benefit to Cboe, which lists ETFs on its equities markets, which are regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CME does not list ETFs because it is not a securities exchange,” according to Bloomberg.
For more information on the cryptocurrency, visit our Bitcoin category.