The world's largest futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME Group), is planning to launch Bitcoin trading to capitalize on Wall Street's surging demand this year.
According to the media, citing people familiar with the matter, CME is in discussions with traders who want to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in a regulated market.
Although the plan is yet to be finalized, once implemented, it will mark a further encroachment on the digital asset sector by major Wall Street institutions since the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved direct investment in Bitcoin by stock market funds in January this year.
Earlier this year, Bitcoin's price rebounded sharply from its 2022 low to a record high, and investors' acceptance of it as a tradable asset continued to grow.
Large investors such as hedge funds and the Wisconsin Investment Commission, including Bracebridge Capital, have invested more than $10 billion in assets in asset management companies.
As traders seek to profit from Bitcoin's volatility, CME has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of renewed institutional interest, surpassing Binance to become the world's largest Bitcoin futures market.
Sources said that CME's potential spot trading business will be carried out through EBS currency trading sites in Switzerland, which has extensive regulations on the trading and storage of crypto assets.
A cryptocurrency trading executive questioned whether CME's Bitcoin trading business could establish a significant market share if it operated in two markets (CME in Chicago and EBS in Switzerland).
He said that the biggest benefit of CME's move is that large regulated exchanges are becoming more and more comfortable with infrastructure for digital asset transactions, such as ensuring the security of Bitcoin. This means that exchanges will soon be able to accept crypto-related collateral, such as tokenized money market funds, to increase security deposits in a more timely manner.
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