Ethereum Futures Are Coming Soon; Here’s When You Can Buy Them – The Motley Fool

Leading cryptocurrency bitcoin has been getting most of the headlines lately, but it isn't the only one that has been rallying in 2020. Ethereum (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency, has also performed extremely well.

In fact, Ethereum has performed even better than bitcoin in 2020. While bitcoin's value is up by about 195% in 2020 as of this writing, Ethereum is worth five times as much as it was at the start of the year. A single Ethereum digital token is now worth about $620, and the entire supply of Ethereum in existence is worth more than $70 billion. This makes Ethereum the clear second-largest cryptocurrency, as it is more than three times the size of the No. 3 token (Ripple).

Image source: Getty Images.

Up until now, if you wanted to bet on the future price of cryptocurrencies with derivative securities, you have been limited to bitcoin. And since CBOE (NYSEMKT:CBOE) pulled the plug on its bitcoin futures products some time ago, there has been only one place to buy bitcoin futures, on CME Group (NASDAQ:CME).

Well, that's about to change.

While CME Group is still the only game in town for cryptocurrency futures (for now), the exchange just announced that it plans to list Ethereum futures in early 2021.

Here's what we know so far. Ethereum futures are scheduled to start trading on Feb. 8, subject to approval from regulators. Each futures contract will represent 50 ETH, which means that each futures contract is tied to about $30,000 of the digital currency at current value.

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Ethereum Futures Are Coming Soon; Here's When You Can Buy Them - The Motley Fool