CME Group, one of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, announced the official launch of futures contracts for Cardano (ADA), Chainlink (LINK), and Stellar (XLM) altcoins.
The statement indicated that both standard contracts and micro-contracts for the three cryptocurrencies in question were made available to investors.
The Cardano contract also offers closing index basis trading (BTIC) via the CME CF New York variant. This feature is especially important for institutional investors who want to execute benchmark trades based on closing prices.
CME Group also announced that its cryptocurrency derivatives trading volume reached record numbers in 2025. Average daily trading volume increased 139% to 278,000 contracts, representing a nominal value of approximately $12 billion, according to company data. During the same period, the average number of open positions reached a historic peak of 313,900 contracts, with a total nominal value of $26.4 billion.
Meanwhile, projects such as Arbitrum, Ondo, Near, and Sui were recently added to the CME CF Cryptocurrency Benchmark Dataset, which provides CME Group’s reference price ratios and real-time indexes. However, there is no official announcement yet regarding the creation of futures contracts for these assets.
*This is not investment advice.