CME Has Been Crushing Volumes and No Plans of Following CBOE’s Bitcoin Futures Discontinuation

In March, CBOE, also known as the Chicago Board Options Exchange, ceased bitcoin futures, but it seems that CBOE’s rival does not plan on taking the same steps.

Rather, CME, also known as Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is doing well and it could be because it has captured the bitcoin futures market that CBOE has stopped catering to.

Between the two, CBOE was the first to launch Bitcoin futures. On March 14, CBOE stated why it was considering to end its bitcoin contract futures from its offerings. The platform stated:

“CFE is not adding a Cboe Bitcoin (USD) (“XBT”) futures contract for trading in March 2019. CFE is assessing its approach with respect to how it plans to continue to offer digital asset derivatives for trading. While it considers its next steps, CFE does not currently intend to list additional XBT futures contracts for trading.”

There are those, though, that deny CBOE’s statement and that its decision was due to low trading volumes. Others argue that it was CME’s bitcoin future contract volume that negatively impacted CBOE.

CME also did not have any comment on CBOE’s decision. However, Lanre Sarumi of Trade Block stated:

“Connecting to both CME and Cboe is expensive. If you are already trading other products on an exchange, then there is no new cost. If not, you must pay for connectivity, software license, market data, cross-connects etc. — all that just to trade one new product?”

At this point, it seems that CME is still working to harness CBOE’s wandering customer base.