Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. announced this Wednesday that it has secured approvals from both the National Futures Association (NFA) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). That means that the firm can now operate as a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), and will therefore be able to offer investments in crypto futures to eligible customers in the United States. https://decrypt.co/152657/coinbase-lands-regulatory-approval-to-offer-crypto-futures-in-us
This may be the last piece of the puzzle for the spot bitcoin etf… Sec wants a SSA (surveillance sharing agreement)with a “regulated exchange”, I’d think Coinbase is that at this point.
Market or at least some thought they had green light for their futures exchange to accept US customers first (hence the sharp green premarket). Imo it's just a FCM now like so many others, so they can offer trading Futures such as the bitcoin futures already listed on a futures exchage (eg. CBOE), so basically a non news event.
From the article: "Coinbase is now poised to be the pioneer in offering U.S. clients both traditional spot crypto trading and regulated crypto futures." No. The CME has already crypto futures.
But they don't offer spot crypto trading. That's what the "pioneering" bit is about. It can offer BOTH.
They had that already, that is their primary business. It is obvious that they wanted to point out that the futures bit are the news.
This is a good thing for hedging Producers (miners) and bitcoin whales can lock in prices in the futures market secured by their bitcoin holdings on Coinbase
Why people are not interested in crypto futures? BTC futures from CME daily volume is extremely low at ~ 5k/day. Its bid-offer spread could be 10, 20, 30 ticks wide. CBOE gave up offering BTC futures. By comparison, NQ futures daily volume is ~700k / day, gold futures ~ 150K / day .... What is Coinbase doing differently to launch a highly liquid crypto futures product successfully?
Although you are technically correct, just be mindful that NQ originated in 1985 and BTC originated 24 years later in 2009, so comparing the futures trading volume between those two instruments is not an apples-to-apples comparison at all. Imagine what the volume will be on BTC futures 24 years from now.