The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is preparing to launch futures contracts for Bitcoin volatility independent of the Bitcoin price

CME, the world’s largest financial derivatives market, announced plans Tuesday to launch Bitcoin Volatility futures contracts that will soon allow traders to bet on the intensity of cryptocurrency price fluctuations.

Derivatives will allow Bitcoin traders to hedge against fluctuations in the asset’s ever-changing price, without betting on the price of Bitcoin itself. The product will debut on June 1, pending regulatory review, CME said.

“With the new Bitcoin volatility futures, traders will be able to invest in or hedge against future volatility of Bitcoin, allowing them to access an important new layer of risk management,” Giovanni Visioso, global head of cryptocurrency products at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, said in a statement.

Financial products that track Bitcoin volatility have become popular this year, as institutions and retail traders look for increasingly sophisticated ways to hedge against long-term Bitcoin positions. In March, CoinShares was released foot To introduce the first Bitcoin ETFs on Wall Street.

ETFs tracked the CME’s Bitcoin Volatility Index, or bfxwhich since 2024 has been providing a real-time benchmark for the volatility of Bitcoin options contracts traded on the CME. Simply put, BVX tracks whether, at any given moment, the market is betting that the price of Bitcoin will fluctuate significantly or remain flat.

CME’s Bitcoin Volatility Futures will also track the BVX index, which is published every second between 7am and 4pm Central Time on market trading days.

Earlier this year, CME announced Plans to expand trading hours for its cryptocurrency products to 24/7, following in the footsteps of other major Wall Street players seeking to keep up with the constant rhythm of the digital asset market. Until now, CME crypto products are traded 23 hours a day, with the weekend between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening.

Non-stop cryptocurrency trading is scheduled to begin on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on May 29, days before the launch of Bitcoin volatility futures.

Bitcoin has recently rebounded and gone higher More than $81,000 on Tuesday For the first time since January. The leading cryptocurrency fell to nearly $60,000 this spring after peaking above $126,000 last October.