- With an eye on Wall Street money managers’ growing demand, CME Group intends to provide bitcoin trading.
- With investments in BTC spot ETFs by Millenium and Schonfeld, institutional interest in bitcoin is rising.
The biggest futures exchange in the world, CME Group, is to start bitcoin trading this year in an effort to take advantage of Wall Street money managers’ growing desire for exposure to the cryptocurrency market.
🇺🇸 Just In: CME Group, the world's largest futures exchange, is planning to launch #Bitcoin spot trading. – Financial Times pic.twitter.com/H9PtzJDZH9
— Crypto India (@CryptooIndia) May 16, 2024
CME Group Discusses with Traders
The group, with its headquarters in Chicago, has been in active discussion with traders who are interested in buying and selling cryptocurrencies on a regulated exchange. Three people who were there at the discussions directly provided this information.
According to the conversations, conventional financial institutions are becoming more and more interested in entering the cryptocurrency industry, which has been gaining a lot of momentum.
Should the strategy be implemented, it would represent a further step by significant Wall Street firms into the digital assets market. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved stock market funds that make direct bitcoin investments in January.
The decision of the SEC has given prospective investors a sense of legitimacy and security by opening the door for increased institutional and regulated involvement in the cryptocurrency market.
Even with all of the buzz around the possible debut, CME Group has not commented. This is not unusual, as the group may still be planning, assessing the regulatory environment, and making sure all the infrastructure is ready to support such a big project.
Investor basis trades would be made easier if spot bitcoin trading were introduced on CME, which already supports bitcoin futures trading. Professional bitcoin traders, as well as those trading US Treasury securities, frequently use basis trading.
To benefit from the little difference between the two, one borrows money to buy the underlying asset and sell futures. Since most Treasury-based transactions take place on CME venues, spot bitcoin trading would be a logical expansion for the exchange.
Market Sentiment and Institutional Interests
Coin journalist Collin Wu tweeted that bullish momentum is expected to return bitcoin prices to their $74,000 highs. The significant buyers of 100–120k BTC calls that QCP Capital saw for December 2024 indicated a strong institutional demand.
QCP: We expect bullish momentum here that could take us back to the highs of 74k. The desk saw sizeable buyers of 100-120k BTC Calls for Dec 2024 on this move higher in spot. Institutional demand for the BTC continues to grow with large asset managers Millenium and Schonfeld…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 16, 2024
Big asset managers like Millenium and Schonfeld have shown increasing interest and confidence in bitcoin as a desirable asset by investing about 3% and 2% of their assets under management (AUM) into BTC spot ETFs.
Meanwhile, CoinGecko data as of the moment indicate that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) is about $65,957.48, up significantly by 6.55% from the previous day. This upward trend of 6.86% has also persisted during the last week.
On the other hand, Fidelity was previously known to have led US Bitcoin ETF inflows by $38 million, according to an earlier ETHNews report.