CME Group to list Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures

Chicago-based derivatives exchange CME Group said Thursday it plans to list futures contracts tied to Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK) and Stellar (XLM) on Feb. 9, pending regulatory approval. The proposed contracts would broaden CME’s crypto derivatives suite regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which already includes futures and options linked to Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Solana.

CME said it will offer both standard and micro futures for each altcoin, with position sizes ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 ADA, 250 to 5,000 LINK and 12,500 to 250,000 XLM. The exchange said the micro contracts are intended to make the products accessible to retail traders, subject to broker support, and noted that futures allow traders to gain price exposure or hedge risk without holding the underlying tokens.

Martin Franchi, CEO of retail futures platform NinjaTrader, said digital assets are reaching a "global inflection point" as they become more integrated into investor portfolios, and that the new contracts reflect growing demand from retail traders for regulated crypto futures. The announcement follows a rebranding of the Nasdaq Crypto Index as the Nasdaq-CME Crypto Index, which tracks BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, LINK, ADA and AVAX, and comes amid limited expansion of US-regulated altcoin futures in 2025.

Key Topics

Crypto, Cme Group, Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Cftc