CME Group, world's largest derivatives marketplace, to offer micro ether futures in December

• CME Group announced it is expanding its suite of crypto offerings with micro ether futures.
• They will be one-tenth the size of one ether and start trading on December 6, pending regulatory review.
• Micro ether futures will join CME's growing suite of crypto derivatives as well as its slate of more than 20 micro products.

CME Group, the world's largest derivatives marketplace, announced Tuesday that it is expanding its suite of crypto offerings with micro ether futures as demand for the second-largest digital asset by market valuation continues to rise.

The smaller-sized contract, which can be settled on a cash basis, will be introduced on December 6, pending regulatory review. Micro ether will be sized at one-tenth of one ether.

This fractionalized asset will allow investors to trade ether in a cost-effective way via fractional units. Ether traded around $4,500 per coin on Tuesday, but Goldman Sachs predicts the asset could well jump 80% to $8,000 in the next two months.

Micro ether futures will join CME Group's growing suite of cryptocurrency derivatives as well as its slate of more than 20 micro products.

Micro bitcoin futures, for instance, launched in May and have since traded more than 2.7 million contracts, CME group said.

And in February, ether futures were listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, significantly strengthening ether's credibility as an asset class just like it did for bitcoin when the coin was listed in December 2017.

Since then, more than 675,500 ether futures contracts have traded, which is the equivalent to about 33.8 million ether, CME added.