CME Group, the derivatives marketplace, and CF Benchmarks, the provider of cryptocurrency benchmark indices, announced plans to introduce 11 new virtual currency reference rates and real-time indices, which will be “calculated and published daily by CF Benchmarks, beginning April 25.”
These reference rates and indices are “not tradable futures products.”
They include the following:
- Algorand (ALGO)
- Cosmos (ATOM)
- Solana (SOL)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Stellar Lumens (XLM)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Polkadot (DOT)
- Chainlink (LINK)
- Polygon (MATIC)
- Uniswap (UNI)
Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity and FX Products, stated:
“As the digital asset market continues to expand, there is an increasing demand for reliable, standardized cryptocurrency pricing information based on robust, regulated reference rates. These new benchmarks, which capture over 90% of the total investible cryptocurrency market cap today, are designed to allow traders, institutions and other users to confidently and more accurately manage cryptocurrency price risk, price portfolios or create structured products like ETFs.”
CME CF Reference Rates and Real-Time Indices are “based on robust methodologies that have regular expert oversight and are designed to meet the growing need for transparent, regulated and round-the-clock pricing.”
Several leading crypto exchanges and trading platforms will “provide pricing data for these new benchmarks, starting initially with Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit and Kraken, as well as LMAX Digital beginning May 3. Each coin will trade on a minimum of two of these constituent exchanges.”
Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, remarked:
“Extending the CME CF Cryptocurrency Reference Rates and Real Time Indices further underlines the commitment of both CF Benchmarks and CME Group to serving investors of all types with robust benchmark pricing across a wider range of cryptocurrency assets. This also further adds to the continued adoption of the digital asset class through regulated investment products and funds.”
Juthica Chou, Head of OTC Options Trading at Kraken, added:
“Enhancing market infrastructure means a broader range of investors can easily engage in the digital asset class. The launch of 11 new indices opens the door for traditional investors to gain exposure to a much broader range of cryptocurrencies through a suite of products they are already familiar with.”
Elliot Johnson, Chief Investment Officer at Evolve ETFs, noted:
“Evolve’s physical-crypto ETFs rely on CME CF Reference Rates to provide liquidity, tight tracking and reliable NAV for investors. We’re very excited to see the CME CF index family expanding to lay the foundation for new, innovative ETFs in this highly coveted asset class.”
Joshua Lim, Head of Derivatives at Genesis Global Trading, commented:
“The transparency and robustness of the new CME CF Reference Rates enable a much broader range of products representing the diversity of crypto assets. We’re excited to be a liquidity partner on the variety of instruments that will be built on top of them.”
Each of these new reference rates will “provide the U.S. dollar price of each digital asset, published once-a-day at 4 p.m. London time, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.”
