It hit a record high of $ 1,764.55 on Friday, bringing its market cap to about $ 1.2 billion.
The cryptocurrency ether is trying to “escape the shadow of bitcoin” this Sunday evening with the launch of futures in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) financial derivatives market, Reuters reports.
The digital currency or token that enables transactions on the ethereum blockchain is the leading financial infrastructureas it manages more than $ 12,000 million in daily transactions.
The CME listing allows investors to diversify crypto positions outside of bitcoin and provides investors with an opportunity to hedge their exposure to ethereum, opening a market where bearish positions in the asset can be easily expressed.
What can happen?
Ether futures, which follow the December 2017 bitcoin price, are cash-settled and priced based on a CME benchmark that extracts data from major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit or Kraken.
According to John Wu, president of the open source platform for creating financial applications using blockchain technology AVA Labs, investors don’t expect large volumes input.
“This will introduce new people and organizations to crypto,” Wu explained, emphasizing that it should actively gain traction as an easy way to access another crypto-based network.
Record value
The second most important cryptocurrency in terms of market cap and daily volume hit a record high of $ 1,764.55, pushing its value to around $ 1.2 trillion.
In a research note, US financial firm JP Morgan Chase suggested that the ether futures price could be followed by a decrease in price of the underlying currency, which is very similar to what happened when bitcoin futures started trading.
According to the UK agency, global investors have started investing money in ethereal funds and products, with inflows of about 56.1 million in January alone. However, Bitcoin continues to be the recipient of most of the global investor flows at 92%, which equaled $ 2 billion last month.
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