CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives market, plans to introduce Solana (SOL) futures on March 17, increasing its suite of cryptocurrency derivatives, it mentioned in a press launch on Friday. The brand new contracts, pending regulatory evaluation, will permit merchants to handle SOL worth threat with two contract sizes: 25 SOL and 500 SOL.
“With the launch of our new SOL futures contracts, we’re responding to rising consumer demand for a broader set of regulated merchandise,” mentioned Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group’s World Head of Cryptocurrency Merchandise.
The contracts can be cash-settled, utilizing the CME CF Solana-Greenback Reference Charge, which tracks SOL’s worth each day at 4:00 p.m. London time. CME already presents bitcoin and ether futures, which have seen important progress in buying and selling exercise. The agency reported a median each day quantity of 202,000 contracts this 12 months, up 73% from 2024.
Business leaders view the transfer as a step towards larger institutional adoption of crypto. Teddy Fusaro, president of Bitwise Asset Administration, famous that CME’s crypto derivatives have helped pave the way in which for regulated monetary merchandise, together with ETFs. Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital added that such merchandise give refined traders extra instruments to handle threat and publicity.
With Solana gaining traction amongst builders and traders, the addition of SOL futures highlights the rising demand for regulated crypto buying and selling merchandise. It might additionally pave the way in which for SOL exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be accredited by the Securities and Change Fee (SEC).
“CME’s choice to record SOL contracts in the present day considerably will increase the likelihood that corresponding spot ETF functions may very well be accredited within the foreseeable future,” mentioned Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks.
“Whereas a precise timeline for approval is difficult to discern, it’s possible the SEC will need to see a number of months’ price of buying and selling on the CME and be glad that the futures correlate with the spot market earlier than it seems to be to approve ETF functions for SOL.”
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