By Suzanne McGee
(Reuters) -CME Group stated on Friday that it plans to roll out futures contracts on cryptocurrency Solana on March 17, pending regulatory evaluation.
The trade stated it expects to debut two contracts, one for 500 Solana cash and a “micro-sized” contract for 25 Solana.
“We’re responding to rising consumer demand for a broader set of regulated merchandise to handle cryptocurrency worth danger,” stated Giovanni Vicioso, international head of cryptocurrency merchandise at CME.
If the merchandise get the regulatory stamp of approval, the launch would clear the way in which for approvals of exchange-traded funds tied to Solana.
The primary filings looking for approval by the U.S. Securities & Trade Fee to launch ETFs tied to the spot worth of Solana had been made in June 2024 by VanEck and digital property supervisor 21Shares. Most just lately, Franklin Templeton made an identical submitting final Friday.
The SEC might need to see a number of months’ value of buying and selling in a brand new Solana futures contract earlier than approving these ETFs, stated Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks, a crypto indexing agency.
The choice “considerably will increase” the probability of an approval, Chung stated.
“A regulated futures market has been the SEC’s major pre-requisite to approve a spot crypto ETF.”
That’s as a result of it brings not less than a part of the buying and selling in a cryptocurrency below the purview of U.S. regulators, giving them confidence that they’ll be capable to determine anybody who makes an attempt to control the market, Chung added.
Asset administration corporations have filed a slew of purposes to launch ETFs tied not solely to Solana however a number of different crypto tokens, together with XRP and Litecoin. That wave of recent filings has grown in quantity because the U.S. presidential election final November, analysts have famous. The crypto trade broadly views Trump as a crypto-friendly president and final month hailed his strikes to overtake digital asset laws.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee in New York)