The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group launched its Bitcoin options trading support yesterday to great fanfare. In fact, the company ended up with 275 Bitcoin offered, which translates to around 55 options contracts, according to an interview with CoinTelegraph.
While this should automatically be considered a successful metric by any account, Tim McCourt, the managing director of CME Group, said specifically to the publication that they’re “very pleased” with its launch day.
“Each option is on one future, and one future is worth five Bitcoin at CME, so a little over $2 million in terms of notional value, which is great to see,” he says.
Of course, Bitcoin options, while not essentially to the surrounding use case of Bitcoin, bring a sort of legitimacy to the offering. After all, many out there are still waiting to get into the market – and that’s not due to a lack of interest. Instead, it’s more that potential investors want additional, well, options to get involved with, which could consist of futures, options offerings, or something else, as long as it’s a feature that traditional markets share as well.
We’ll have to see if the CME Group will see continued success. That said it isn’t the only one expanding into new features for its Bitcoin traders. Bakkt recently launched physically-backed Bitcoin futures, for example, as well as cash-settled ones and even options themselves some time later.
