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BlackRock is adding cash-settled Bitcoin futures as an eligible investment to three funds. It filed updated prospectuses with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that included cash-settled Bitcoin futures among the assets they can buy. The three funds are the Global Allocation Fund, Strategic Income Opportunities Portfolio, Emerging Markets Flexible Dynamic Bond Portfolio.

An eightfold rally in Ethereum (ETH) over the past year to a record faces possible turbulence from the impending launch of CME ETH futures. The contracts set to debut on February 8 evoke memories of 2017, when the start of Bitcoin futures coincided with a peak in the leading digital asset ahead of a spectacular bust. A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco analysis posits the derivatives opened the door for bearish investors.

Crypto exchange OKEx is planning to launch Tether-based futures trading, offering a linear futures contract with leverage of up to 100x. The contract will have daily settlement and offers supported pairs with Bitcoin, EOS, Ether, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, XRP, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin SV and Tron.

Bitcoin (BTC) futures daily volumes on digital asset platform Bakkt have hit a new all-time high, with 1,741 futures traded on Nov. 9.

Bitcoin futures market Bakkt intends to expand from its current physically-settled offerings to cash-settled futures before 2020.

Bakkt confirmed its forthcoming launch of a cash-settled Bitcoin futures contract that will be listed on ICE Futures Singapore as of Dec. 9.

Three months after launching its physically settled bitcoin futures product, the Intercontinental Exchange's Bakkt has gone live with its bitcoin options and cash-settled futures contracts.

Bakkt records over 50% surge in open interest, launching the options on Bitcoin futures contracts today along with cash-settled Bitcoin futures.

USDT-settled futures contracts are easier to manage because the returns are linear and unaffected by strong BTC price moves. For those willing to short the futures contracts, there is no need to buy BTC at any time, but there are costs involved to keep open positions.

ErisX launched the first U.S. futures contracts for ether. It's the first time a futures product has been devised and sanctioned by the CFTC for a crypto-asset besides bitcoin. Equally notable is that the listing is happening with a product whose operational underpinnings are generally understood to be more complex than bitcoin's. But perhaps the truly interesting thing about the launch is the relative absence of criticism concerning what is effectively the financialization of the risk of the (digital) asset.

Derivatives platform FTX launched a futures product which tracks Bitcoin's hash rate. The contracts track the average difficulty of the Bitcoin network each day from the start to the end of each quarter. The difficulty is used because measuring hash rate accurately is impossible, but given that difficulty adjustments attempt to maintain 10m block times, over long periods of time the average hashrate will be proportional to the average difficulty. https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043631671-Hashrate-Futures-Specs

CME Group's cash-settled bitcoin futures have hit an all-time high open interest of $1 billion. CME launched its bitcoin futures in December 2017, and it is currently the only regulated cash-settled offering in the U.S. Earlier this year, CME also began trading in bitcoin options. Aggregate open interest in the bitcoin options market is also growing, touching $3.8 billion recently.

Germany's Eurex derivatives exchange launched its euro-denominated Bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN) Futures contract. It is based on London-based ETC Group's centrally cleared BTCetc Physical Bitcoin (BTCE) Bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP). The futures contract allows investors to track the price development of Bitcoin in a regulated environment and will be physically delivered in BTCE, which is 100% backed by Bitcoin and can be instantly converted by any investor into the underlying BTC.

"ProShares announced it will launch its bitcoin futures-tied exchange traded fund (ETF) on October 19. On October 15, the firm filed a post-effective amendment prospectus stating its intention to list on October 18. Now, additional public documents say that 'the Fund is scheduled to list and begin trading on the NYSE Arca on October 19, 2021.' The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF will trade under the ticker $BITO. It will invest mostly in bitcoin futures, though it will not directly invest in the cryptocurrency. The SEC has yet to approve a spot-based bitcoin ETF, and many proposals have been cast aside due to concerns of price manipulation in the bitcoin spot market."

The Bermuda-based Coinbase International Exchange launched following regulatory approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA). It will initially offer Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures settled in USD Coin (USDC) only to qualified institutional clients outside of the United States through an application Programming interface (API). According to Coinbase, perpetual futures accounted for nearly 75% of global crypto trading volume in 2022, and Coinbase's offerings will allow leverage of up to 5x. https://www.coinbase.com/blog/introducing-coinbase-international-exchange

"Unlike conventional derivatives, the perpetual future never deviates from the spot price of the crypto it is referencing. Usually, if you trade one-month, two-month, or three-month futures of anything, the price will reflect premiums or discounts relative to the reference price - something known as basis. The perpetual swap's design, by creating an active price for intraday funding, prevents that."

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) published the results of a study that demonstrates that hedging the most liquid crypto assets for which there is a two-way market, so-called Group 2a crypto assets (Bitcoin and Ether), with their respective futures or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), is effective. The paper also shows that the basis risk profile of Group 2a crypto-asset futures is comparable with that of existing financial assets. The capital treatment should therefore allow for offsetting for Group 2a crypto-assets and their futures and ETFs.

Since Bitcoin's largest price decline and the launch of the Bitcoin futures market coincided in December 2017, there have been heated discussions about whether the launch of the futures market crashed the Bitcoin market. This paper empirically shows that this is not so.

There have been significant pricing effects sourced from both fraudulent and regulatory unease within the industry. Bitcoin futures dominate price discovery relative to spot markets. CBOE futures are found to be the leading source of informational flow when compared directly to their CME equivalent

Hedge funds on CME are short on Bitcoin futures for more than $1 billion. They have been increasing their short positions since October when the BTC price started climbing. As data provider Skew has previously shared, these leveraged funds, while short on CME Bitcoin futures, are likely to be long on Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) trying to collect the Grayscale premium and the CME futures basis. Interestingly, for the first time ever, the GBTC premium, the difference between the market price of bitcoin and the implied price by GBTC, has gone negative today. This premium has been dropping ever since December 22nd, 2020, when it was above 40%.