$XRP The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) confirmed that on May 19, XRP futures will hit the market.

After regulatory approval, traders will be able to trade contracts in large size (50,000 XRP) or micro (2,500 XRP).

Futures contracts allow investors to speculate on the future price of an asset at a specified date without needing to directly own the cryptocurrency, in this case, XRP.

It is an agreement between two parties: one agrees to buy and the other to sell the asset at a predetermined price in the future. When the contract's expiration date arrives, the parties exchange the difference in cash (in cash-settled contracts), depending on whether the asset's value turned out to be higher or lower than initially agreed.

This type of instrument is used both to speculate on market movements (betting that the price will rise or fall) and to hedge against risks in high volatility scenarios.

In the case of XRP, futures allow traders and institutions to have exposure to the asset without needing to directly custody it.

CME Group's XRP futures will be cash-settled and based on the CME CF XRP reference rate, which tracks the asset's price daily until 16:00 London time.

After the launch date was announced, Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, expressed through his social media: "Although it arrives late in several ways, this is an incredibly important and exciting step in the ongoing growth of the XRP market."

In this way, XRP is incorporated into the portfolio of instruments linked to digital assets offered by CME Group, which already includes derivatives such as contracts on bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), the native currency of Ethereum.

Additionally, futures contracts for solana (SOL) were recently launched.