CME to launch BTC and ETH reference rates in APAC region

CME Group will launch Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) reference rates for the Asia Pacific region.

On Aug. 16, CME Group announced it would launch the new reference rates on Sept. 11.

The senior director for digital currency products at CME Group, Giovanni Vicioso, indicated that introducing the latest reference rates aims to address the changing requirements of international players in the expanding digital asset industry.

Vicioso pointed out that this year saw nearly 37% of their cryptocurrency trades occur outside U.S. business hours, with a significant 11% originating from the APAC region.

He further commented that including APAC reference rates will empower market players to hedge against cryptocurrency price fluctuations more effectively, synchronizing better with their portfolio timings.

CME’s reference rates will be used for the APAC region, focusing on pricing settlements of crypto futures contracts. They will focus on BTC and ETH and will be published daily at 4 pm Hong Kong time.

The company has other reference rates for BTC and ETH, published under London and New York time zones. CME also has reference rates for metaverse projects like Axie Infinity Shards, Chiliz (CHZ), and Decentraland (MANA).

The firm has been helping investors and traders worldwide by providing different data, like reference rates that work towards crypto spot exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken.

These rates are usually used for pricing settlement of futures contracts, including CME’s Bitcoin and Ether futures products.

During the last few months, different countries inside the Asian region have been developing strong cryptocurrency ecosystems, like Hong Kong and Singapore. CME’s new launching is aligning with the current growth that the Asian region is having in the cryptocurrency industry.