Article content

The world’s biggest exchange just joined the bitcoin revolution.

Bitcoinfutures started trading Sunday night at CME Group Inc.’s venue, a week after Chicago rival Cboe Global Markets Inc. introduced similar derivatives on the volatile cryptocurrency. CME is a much bigger player in futures, so many traders expected it to make a bigger splash in the nascent space.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Bitcoin just started trading on the world’s biggest exchange — here's why that matters Back to video

CME got off to a faster start with more efficient pricing. Its most-active contract changed hands 221 times in the first hour versus 570 during Cboe’s debut. But that’s a win because CME’s contracts are five times more valuable — they’re tied to five bitcoins compared with only one with Cboe’s futures.

“People were better prepared” for the start of trading at CME, said Bobby Cho, head of trading at Cumberland, the cryptocurrency trading unit of DRW Holdings LLC. “They knew how they were going to hedge their positions.”

CME’s futures traded at about 2 per cent above bitcoin itself as of 11:56 a.m. in London; in the first day, Cboe’s got as much as 13 per cent above, a sign trading was relatively inefficient. Bitcoin today climbed 9 per cent from its Friday New York close to US$19,190, approaching the record US$19,511 reached hours earlier.