Ether Futures To Be Introduced By CME Group In September

Leading derivative market Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group has announced plans to introduce options on Ethereum futures on September 12 while awaiting regulatory approval.

Added choice to give customers greater freedom

According to CME Group's Tim McCourt, Global Head of Equity and FX Products, the launch of ETH futures will boost the growth and liquidity already seen in the existing Ether futures, which have been traded in excess of 1.8 million contracts to date.

Prior to the anticipated 15 September Ethereum merger, CME Group has signed new contracts that will "expand CME Group's existing suite of Cryptocurrency options contracts, which include Bitcoin options, as well as micro-sized Bitcoin and Ether options." These contracts will include ETH futures trading options.

The CME CF Ether-Dollar Reference Rate, which acts as a once-daily reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of ETH, is the basis for the weighting of the Ether futures, which will go live in September.

Checklist for Ethereum's merge mainnet has finished

In a tweet earlier today, Tim Beiko, one of Ethereum's core engineers, announced that the Mainnet is prepared to combine with the beacon chain. If all goes according to plan, the Ethereum blockchain will switch from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake mechanism in less than a month.

The developers of Ethereum are required to review the checklist for specifications, testing, testnets, and RandD. A while ago, the last testnet for Goerli went live, and it was successful.

Beiko claims that a number of issues have been examined, including the implementation of software and updates for the consensus and execution layer, Engine API authentication, and the release of public documents.