CME Group and CF Benchmarks to launch 11 cryptocurrency reference rates

By Edlyn Cardoza

CME Group, one of the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, and CF Benchmarks, the leading provider of cryptocurrency benchmark indices, recently announced plans to launch 11 new cryptocurrency reference rates and real-time indices, which will be calculated and published daily by CF Benchmarks, beginning April 25.

These reference rates and indices are not tradable futures products. They include the following:

• Algorand (ALGO)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Cardano (ADA)
• Chainlink (LINK)
• Cosmos (ATOM)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Polkadot (DOT)
• Polygon (MATIC)
• Solana (SOL)
• Stellar Lumens (XLM)
• Uniswap (UNI)

“As the digital asset market continues to expand, there is an increasing demand for reliable, standardized cryptocurrency pricing information based on robust, regulated reference rates,” said Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity and FX Products. “These new benchmarks, which capture over 90% of the total investible cryptocurrency market cap today, are designed to allow traders, institutions and other users to confidently and more accurately manage cryptocurrency price risk, price portfolios or create structured products like ETFs.”

CME CF Reference Rates and Real-Time Indices are based on robust methodologies with regular expert oversight. They are designed to meet the growing need for transparent, regulated, and round-the-clock pricing.

Several leading crypto exchanges and trading platforms will provide pricing data for these new benchmarks, starting initially with Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit and Kraken, and LMAX Digital beginning May 3. Each coin will trade on a minimum of two of these constituent exchanges.

“Extending the CME CF Cryptocurrency Reference Rates and Real Time Indices further underlines the commitment of both CF Benchmarks and CME Group to serving investors of all types with robust benchmark pricing across a wider range of cryptocurrency assets, said Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks. “This also further adds to the continued adoption of the digital asset class through regulated investment products and funds.”

“Enhancing market infrastructure means a broader range of investors can easily engage in the digital asset class,” said Juthica Chou, Head of OTC Options Trading at Kraken. “The launch of 11 new indices opens the door for traditional investors to gain exposure to a much broader range of cryptocurrencies through a suite of products they are already familiar with.”

“Evolve’s physical-crypto ETFs rely on CME CF Reference Rates to provide liquidity, tight tracking and reliable NAV for investors,” says Elliot Johnson, Chief Investment Officer at Evolve ETFs. “We’re very excited to see the CME CF index family expanding to lay the foundation for new, innovative ETFs in this highly coveted asset class.”

“The transparency and robustness of the new CME CF Reference Rates enable a much broader range of products representing the diversity of crypto assets,” said Joshua Lim, Head of Derivatives at Genesis Global Trading. “We’re excited to be a liquidity partner on the variety of instruments that will be built on top of them.”

Each of these new reference rates will provide the U.S. dollar price of each digital asset, published once a day at 4 p.m. London time, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.