Group items tagged

SIX presents seven possible futures for money, in both its physical and digital form. The scenarios focus on Switzerland but continuing discussions will also take us beyond its borders. What is considered money, what form it takes, and how it is used, all look set to change dramatically in the near future.

XRP's sudden surge higher comes after Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by volume, announced it will be adding Ripple's XRP and the stablecoin tether as a futures trading pair. Binance adds XRP futures to three other tether-tied contracts-bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and ethereum.

On May 11, 2020 ErisX launched the first U.S. futures contracts for ether. It is a physically delivered futures contract based on ETH-USD with monthly and quarterly expirations. They will trade alongside the ErisX spot market on a unified platform enabling price transparency and collateral efficiencies.

When guessing at the future of crypto, keep in mind that the future of crypto exchanges and the future of crypto assets are very different things. For many pure crypto bugs, the exchanges are a sellout and a concession to older methods of finance and settlement. The exchanges can be regulated, controlled and co-opted, even turned against the notion of individual monetary sovereignty. Instead, the pure crypto vision stresses the notion of "every person their own bank," through the medium of a personal wallet and beyond easy purview of the central authorities. So if the major exchanges are damaged or co-opted by the establishment, pure crypto bugs might celebrate rather than mourn. It is thus a mistake to see the possible demise of crypto in the possible demise of FTX. Instead, the purer crypto vision will be given more of a chance to flourish - or, for that matter, to fail.

"The Future of Cash conference in Istanbul saw some big conversations about cash today and its future. The mood was more upbeat this year as transactional demand for cash has primarily rebounded from the lows of the pandemic, and the access to cash agenda has gathered pace in countries facing the reality of less cash."

A NY Fed blog post argues that stablecoins are unlikely to be the future of payments, but if distributed ledger technology platforms are the transfer mechanism of the future, then tokenized bank deposits might be a fruitful avenue to pursue. One of the reasons given is that, because they are fractionally backed by reserves, tokenized deposits wouldn't lock up liquidity like stablecoins do, plus deposits support bank lending to the real economy and the transmission of monetary policy.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued crypto exchange Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao on allegations the company knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivatives products in the U.S. against federal law. The suit also alleged that the company directed its employees to spoof their locations through the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). The CFTC is charging Binance with violating laws around offering futures transactions, illegal off-exchange commodity options, failing to register as a futures commissions merchant, designated contract market or swap execution facility, poorly supervising its business, not implementing know-your-customer (KYC) or anti-money laundering (AML) processes and having a poor anti-evasion program. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.431767/gov.uscourts.ilnd.431767.1.0_1.pdf

"The Commission previously approved ETPs that hold only futures contracts that trade on the CME, which is registered with the CFTC; those ETPs' underlying assets are thus subject to robust surveillance," it said. "The bitcoin spot market, by contrast, is fragmented and unregulated, and petitioner presented no supportable basis to conclude that the CME's surveillance of futures trading would sufficiently detect and deter fraud and manipulation targeting the bitcoin spot market and thereby protect against fraud and manipulation in Grayscale's product." https://grayscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Reply-Brief-of-Respondent-SEC-12092022.pdf

The number of open contracts for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's (CME) bitcoin (BTC) futures is reportedly at an all-time high.

The overstatement of trading volumes by cryptocurrency exchanges, and by implication the understatement of the importance of listed futures, suggests that market structure has likely changed considerably since the previous spike in Bitcoin prices in end-2017 with a greater influence from institutional investors.

ErisX announced that the CFTC granted it a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) license, acting as a secondary approval on top of an existing designated contract contract market (DCM) license that the exchange already held. The approvals mean the copmany can now launch crypto futures products under the auspices of the U.S. regulator.

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is soon to launch (up to 20 times leverage) margin and futures trading.

Binance launched two futures testnet platforms to allow potential users to explore each product and its offerings ahead of the official launch.

LedgerX launched the first physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts in the U.S., beating ICE's Bakkt and TD Ameritrade-backed ErisX to the punch. It will be available to both institutional and retail investors.

ICE subsidiary Bakkt has acquired a New York state trust charter through the New York State Department of Financial Services, and claimed that the CFTC has green lighted it to begin offering its physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts on September 23.

The New York State Department of Financial Services authorized Bakkt Trust Company LLC to offer custody services for Bitcoin following the introduction of trading physically delivered Bitcoin futures contracts on the Intercontinental Exchange Futures U.S. Under its charter, Bakkt will provide services to institutional customers.

Customers will have a $3,900 deposit requirement for both Bakkt's daily and monthly futures contracts as an initial hedge. The speculative initial requirements will be somewhat higher, at $4,290 each.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group is petitioning United States regulators to allow its clients to double their open Bitcoin futures positions.

Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is closer to offering Bitcoin futures trading as its Bakkt unit opened its digital-asset custody warehouse to customers. Here are the nuts and bolts of how it will work.

Intercontinental Exchange's (ICE) Bakkt platform has traded 71 Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts in the first 24 hours following its launch on Sept. 22.