The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) officially launched XRP futures contracts today, in a new expansion step within its offerings of cryptocurrency derivatives, which already include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana contracts.
These new contracts allow institutional investors to gain exposure to XRP price movements without needing to actually own the digital asset, through cash trading based on the CME CF reference price for the XRP-USD pair.
The contracts come in two different models:
The standard contract represents 50,000 XRP, with a volatility yield of $25 per minimum price movement ($0.0005 per coin).
And the micro contract covers only 2,500 coins at the same rate of change, equivalent to $1.25 per contract.
The contracts are listed monthly for six consecutive months, alongside quarterly listings in March, June, September, and December.
Access to the contracts is available through the 'CME Globex' and 'CME ClearPort' platforms, according to the regular trading schedule from Sunday to Friday, with a daily pause for one hour.
The minimum trade size is five contracts for standard contracts and ten for mini contracts, with trades to be reported within 15 minutes.
Fees are determined by participant type, with individual members paying $4 and $0.75 for standard and mini contracts respectively, while non-members face higher fees of up to $7.50 and $1.15.
This development comes days after Judge Analisa Torres rejected a joint request from Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to approve a $50 million settlement due to procedural violations in the submission of the request.
Despite this legal backdrop, the currency maintained a degree of stability; the price of XRP fell by 1.3% over 24 hours and 2.6% over the week, while monthly gains remained at 12.1%, indicating growing interest in institutional trading of the currency.
