Singapore – Institutional Investors quickly embrace CME’s futures for and Solana Both were launched earlier this year along with a steady growth in Bitcoin and ether Derivatives, according to Tim McCourt, Exchange’s Global Head of Equity & FX products.
In a speech at the ongoing Token2049 conference participating in Coindesk, McCourt said the total Crypto Futures Open Interest, a key indicator of institutional activity, has doubled year-over-year and now reaches $ 30 to $ 35 billion daily. It is important that this growth is not driven exclusively by Bitcoin.
CME’s cash-filled futures have long served as a go-to institutions that want exposure to cryptocurrencies through regulated products, without having to own tokens directly.
Futures contracts are standardized, legally binding agreements between two parties to buy or sell an asset at a fixed price of a specific future date. Open interest rates refer to the number of active contracts at any time, often expressed in dollar value.
“When we look at the new futures we recently introduced this year, XRP and Sol, they also enjoy institutional adoption with open interest in record highs,” McCourt said under the panel, “institutional flows to digital assets.”
Sun and xrp wave for $ 1b oi mark
The Standard Solana Futures contract, size of 500 sun, debuted in mid-March and crossed the nominal open interest mark of $ 1 billion in August. Futures tied to the payments-focused XRP crossed this threshold in August, just three months after they started trading with a standard contract size of 50,000 XRP.
“The speed at which Solana accumulates open interest is really interesting. Sol took about five months to hit one billion [OI] Mark compared to ether that took about eight months. Meanwhile, BTC took three years, “McCourt said.
He also noted the record activity in both Ether futures and opportunities. From Tuesday, open interest in Ether Futures contracted, size to 50 ETH, of $ 9.05 billion, after hit a life of $ 10.42 billion in August.
Ether futures began shopping at CME in early 2021. Open interest in Ether Settings also hit a record height of over $ 1 billion in September.
“While crypto is hot, ether is definitely hot at CME. We see record open interest, record trading volume, both in standard and micro-size contracts,” McCourt noted.
Cme futures contributes to price discovery
The availability of regulated crypto -futures along with the debut of spot -TFs in the United States has brought greater legitimacy and transparency on the market, attracted more institutional capital and increased overall market liquidity.
CME’s cash-filled futures enable large investors to uncover risks, speculate and establish arbitrage acting, effectively deal with their net exposure.
These futures therefore contribute to price discovery, reduce volatility through an orderly trading mechanism and pave the way for the wider adoption of digital assets in traditional markets.
Stableecoins as partners in traditional banks
The panel also included a discussion about the impact of ETFs and stableecoins with insights from Binance CEO Richard Teng, Bitwise Asset Management CEO Hunter Horsley and Heath Tarbert, president of Circle, the issuer of USDC, the world’s second largest stableecoin.
Tarbert said stableecoins are ideal partners of traditional banks that emphasize the importance of legal and legislative clarity.
He added that stableecoins like USDC can help banks integrate and offer tokenized versions of their lending products, which emphasizes that these dollar-pegged tokens are not competitors to banks but ways to create new financial products.
Horsley said that 2025 marks the beginning of the mainstream era of crypto, while Teng highlighted different waves of institutional interest.
