CME Group (NASDAQ: CME), the world’s largest futures exchange, is going to introduce Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) futures product in mid-December.
"When can you be able to short this product, I think sometime in the second week in December you'll see our contract out for listing," Terry Duffy, chairman and CEO of CME told CNBC.
CME CEO added that the platform is not going to control Bitcoin’s price fluctuations. Instead, it will allow investors to take advantage of the cryptocurrency volatility.
“I’m not trying to rein in the volatility of Bitcoin,” Duffy said. “But what I want to do is give it a place for other people to lay out that risk. Today you cannot short Bitcoin. So there’s only one way it can go. You either buy it or sell it to somebody else. So you create a two-sided market, I think it’s always much more efficient,” he said.
CME announced on Oct. 31 it would launch Bitcoin futures by the end of the year, pending regulatory review. The futures contract will be cash-settled according to the daily settlement price of the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), which tracks a few major Bitcoin exchanges.