CME Group will launch futures on Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap on 19 October, pending regulatory review, it said on Tuesday. Standard contracts will cover 250 BCH and 10,000 UNI, with micro versions at a tenth of that size. Bitcoin Cash was up 32 percent over the following 24 hours, according to CoinDesk market data, making it the standout mover among large tokens on a day when bitcoin itself slipped.
The pair will be CME’s tenth and eleventh single-asset crypto futures, joining Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche and Sui. The exchange’s crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts a day in the first half of 2026, about $8.3 billion in notional value. Giovanni Vicioso, its global head of cryptocurrency products, said a maturing market needs broader regulated tools for managing price exposure.
Futures on a regulated US exchange let funds take a position without holding the coin, which matters to institutions whose mandates bar them from direct custody. They also give market makers somewhere to hedge, which tends to tighten spot pricing. For a token like Uniswap’s UNI, whose value rests on a decentralised exchange, a CME listing is also a kind of mainstream endorsement that no governance vote could buy.
The number CME has not published is how much of its crypto business the newer contracts actually carry. It says this year’s altcoin additions have contributed more than $1 billion in notional value, without breaking that down by coin or saying how it compares with open interest in bitcoin and ether. A 32 percent jump on an announcement looks less like institutional demand than traders positioning for institutions they hope will arrive.
