The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) plans to launch futures trading for XRP and Solana (SOL) on February 10, pending regulatory approval, according to a Jan. 22nd X post by Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart.
The information comes from a staging version of CME’s official website, which hinted at the upcoming release. The contracts will feature standard and micro-sized options, allowing traders to fine-tune their strategies, and bringing Wall Street increasingly closer to our market.
What we know so far
The new contracts will be financially settled on a monthly basis and will include Basis Trade at Index Close (BTIC) and block functionality. According to the CME beta site, these features will provide traders with greater flexibility and precision.
While the main CME site hasn’t confirmed the launch yet, the beta page’s detailed listing leaves little doubt about the company’s plans.
James said, “Assuming ‘beta.cmegroup’ is actually a beta/test version of the actual CMEGroup website — looks like CME is expecting to launch SOL XRP futures on February 10.”
The timing of these futures contracts coincides with growing interest in XRP and Solana within the financial sector. Standard Chartered predicted on Jan. 20th that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for these cryptos might be approved by 2025.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan estimated in December that these ETFs could attract up to $13.6 billion in investments within a year of approval.
Regulation is still a huge problem for Solana though. The big question is whether it’s going to be labeled a commodity or a security, and that decision could completely change the chances of future ETF approvals.
Last year, people got excited when the SEC started reviewing S-1 applications for Solana ETFs. It looked like things were finally moving forward. Then the agency shut it all down. VanEck, 21Shares, Bitwise, and Canary Capital all had their applications rejected.
James said at the time that: “The SEC essentially refused to acknowledge the most recent Solana ETF filings.” ETF issuers had already done their part, filing all the necessary 19b-4 forms—those are what companies use to request rule changes.
These forms worked just fine for spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs last year, but this time, the SEC told issuers to pull them all. According to a Jan. 22 report from The Block, the SEC straight-up asked for everything to be withdrawn.
Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett said, “A CME spokesperson has said that the beta version of the website, which is often used for mock up drafts, was made public in error. No official decisions have yet been made about launching futures contracts for either token.”
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