By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 19th, 2024
After CME Group decided to launch trading for Bitcoin futures contracts, the Mercado de Termino de Rosario, Argentina’s biggest futures market, considers offering services for investors in digital currencies.
As it was announced on Tuesday, October 31, CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, revealed its plans to launch trading for Bitcoin futures contracts before the end of the year. The company is now waiting for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approval.
The CME announcement was followed by a great leap forward of Bitcoin’s rate. For the first time ever BTC is traded at up to $7000, which is another cryptocurrency’s all-time-high, in spite of Chinese and Korean banning cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Following the example of CME Group, Argentina’s most important futures market Mercado de Termino de Rosario, known as Rofex, has disclosed its intention to offer offer bitcoin services to investors. The company began to consider the point six months ago. Its preliminary drafts include offering custody services for the digital asset and the possibility for clients to use bitcoin as collateral in futures trading.
The official announcement is planned to be made by the end of the year. According to Rofex head Diego Fernández, a custody service could be launched in 2018, and “accepting bitcoins as a guarantee of futures contracts” would be the next step.
Fernandez explained the company’s intention in the following way:
“I would clearly like to do bitcoins futures, because it’s our core business.”
The digital currency entered Argentina’s market in 2012 and started to rapidly gain popularity after the President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner tightened currency controls and inflation debased the Argentine peso. This year the amount of bitcoins operated in Argentina has reached its record of 2.1 million pesos in June, which is four times more than the amount of bitcoins operated in the same period last year.
Bitcoin derivatives opportunities have also been explored by other big markets. In August 2017, The Chicago Board Options Exchange announced its collaboration with the Winklevoss twin’s Gemini Exchange. Together, the partners intend to launch a cryptocurrency derivatives trading service similar to the one announced by Merc.
The premise of such co-working was the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) registration of the cryptocurrency trading platform LedgerX, an institutional trading and clearing platform to trade in cryptocurrencies. The platform represents the first regulated exchange and clearinghouse to list and clear fully-collateralized, physically-settled bitcoin swaps and options for the institutional market. Unlike any other regulated exchanges, LedgerX allows its customer to settle in and take possession of actual bitcoins after their trades.