Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE), which was the first U.S. exchange to list Bitcoin futures contracts, says it will not be offering new Bitcoin BTC, 1.15% futures contracts in March 2019. In a recently published notice, the exchange states:
“CFE is not adding a Cboe Bitcoin (USD) (“XBT”) futures contract for trading in March 2019. CFE is assessing its approach with respect to how it plans to continue to offer digital asset derivatives for trading. While it considers its next steps, CFE does not currently intend to list additional XBT futures contracts for trading. Currently listed XBT futures contracts remain available for trading.”
While CFE did not provide details about why they chose to re-evaluate their decision to offer Bitcoin futures trading, a possible reason is that Bitcoin futures volume seen by its competitor CME has been dwarfing the trading activity on CFE ever since spring 2018. CME, a bigger exchange, launched their Bitcoin futures contracts about a week after CFE.
Alex Krüger
· 21h
Seems the CBOE will stop offering bitcoin futures next June. Quite unfortunate.
(source: http://markets.cboe.com/resources/product_update/2019/Update-New-CFE-Products-to-be-Added-in-March-2019.pdf …)
John Todaro
@JohnTodaro1
That's cause Cboe bitcoin futures trading volumes have been getting crushed by CME. pic.twitter.com/4dpi9Tfuwg
41
6:55 PM - Mar 14, 2019
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The last of the currently listed BTC futures contracts by CFE is set to expire on June 19. CFE’s BTC futures are cash-settled, and are based on the price of Bitcoin on auctions held by the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. CME’s contracts are cash-settled as well, but their prices are based on multiple exchanges such as Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Kraken.