CME Wants to Double Its Monthly BTC Futures Trading Cap to USD 100M

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper is a British journalist and features writer who has worked at Cryptonews.com since 2018. He has written for media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, and Chosun Ilbo. He has also worked...

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June 26, 2023

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The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group) has announced that it intends to double its monthly Bitcoin futures trading cap to BTC 10,000 (USD 103 million) – and has already asked America’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for regulatory permission.

Currently, individual investors may not purchase more than 1,000 contracts per month, with each contract representing BTC 5. But per a letter to the CFTC hosted on the CME Group’s website, the group says it wants to boost that number to 2,000, for a maximum limit of BTC 10,000.

The company says it “deems [the new proposed limit] to be adequately stringent to discourage attempted manipulation of the Bitcoin Reference Rate benchmark in connection with final settlements of expiring contracts.”

The CME says that its increased spot month limits will become effective at the close of trading on September 30 for the contract month of October 2019 and subsequently, although its move is still subject to CFTC approval.

The company took to Twitter to further explain its decision.

The CME Group is currently the only American entity offering Bitcoin futures, after the group’s rival, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) pulled the plug on its own offering in March this year.

However, as previously reported on Cryptonews.com, Bakkt has already begun testing its own Bitcoin futures product, and hopes to begin offering this via the ICE Futures US exchange starting September 23.

Earlier this week, Bitcoin.com stated that it was hopeful of convincing the CME Group to list Bitcoin Cash futures derivatives.

Meanwhile, major cryptocurrency exchange Binance said that their Binance Futures will go live today, September 13. The company added that all users will receive a 50% discount on trading fees when trading on Binance Futures for the next 3 months.

At pixel time (06:21 UTC), bitcoin trades at c. USD 10,367 and is up by 2.5% in the past 24 hours, while it’s down by more than 3% in the past week.