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On the first day of trading, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures contracts represented a transaction volume of more than $30 million. They represent an opportunity to attract institutional investors.
Bitcoin is certainly no longer the only crypto-active to seduce investors. Litecoin, for example, has a high level of activity. Open interest on futures contracts reached a record $584 million.
The conclusion? Altcoin interests institutional investors such as Bitwise and Grayscale. But the same is true for the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization, Ethereum. Its value is at its highest, above 1800 dollars.
Does the start of CME’s ETH futures contracts contribute to this? It’s very hard to say so in the short term. On the other hand, the Chicago Stock Exchange’s launch of futures contracts should support the long-term trend.
Nevertheless, these contracts are already performing well. Their value exceeded $30 million on the first day of listing. More importantly, these futures of ETH should help boost institutional adoption of the asset.
As for CME, aka Chicago Mercantile Exchange, it completes its offer of futures contracts on digital assets. As early as December 2017, the exchange launched futures on Bitcoin in the middle of a bull run.
However, CME is not the first to launch this type of financial product on Ether. Other exchanges, in particular crypto exchanges, have been offering their own ETH futures since 2017. These include Binance, Deribit, and OKEx.
However, this launch marks “a significant step” for Ethereum. It offers “institutional investors and risk-averse companies a new way of exposure to the native assets of the largest decentralized platform”, note our colleagues from Decrypt.
For many observers, this step is also an opportunity to underline the rise of Ethereum against Bitcoin. “Ethereum is now the largest trustless fund settlement network,” said Ryan Adams of Mythos Capital.
And according to the Blockchain Center’s Flippening Index, Ethereum would overtake Bitcoin in other areas as well. These include the number of transactions and nodes, transaction volume and fees.
Thanks to ETH’s leading position in DeFi, it is a must-have. As a result, Ethereum now totals 1 billion transactions. And within two years, the blockchain should reach 2 billion.