Digital asset prime dealer FalconX mentioned Saturday it has accomplished the “first-ever” block commerce for CME Group’s Solana futures with StoneX as counterparty, a day forward of the SOL futures launch of latest contracts anticipated on March 17.
The San Mateo, California headquartered dealer executed the transaction with the purpose of offering a approach “to handle threat and value publicity on a regulated venue,” Josh Barkhordar, head of U.S. gross sales on the agency mentioned in a assertion.
A block commerce on this context is a large-volume, privately negotiated transaction of the futures contracts, executed outdoors the open market to keep away from disrupting the asset’s value.
CME Group debuted the Solana futures contract in late February to fulfill “rising shopper demand,” because it vies to place the providing as a precursor and “main pre-requisite” to a SOL ETF.
A number of asset administration companies have filed purposes with the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee to launch Solana ETFs.
Notably, Franklin Templeton, managing over $1.5 trillion in belongings, submitted a submitting in late February 2025. Different companies, together with Grayscale, 21Shares, Bitwise, VanEck, and Canary Capital, have additionally filed for spot Solana ETFs.
Solana futures comply with the sample established with Bitcoin and Ethereum, the place futures buying and selling preceded ETF authorization and approval from a regulatory physique.
The brand new contracts are available two sizes: normal contracts representing 500 SOL and micro contracts representing 25 SOL.
The futures are then cash-settled based mostly on the CME CF Solana-Greenback Reference Charge, calculated each day at 4:00 p.m. London time, offering a standardized benchmark for SOL’s U.S. greenback value.
FalconX operates as a key liquidity supplier for CME Group’s crypto derivatives suite. The corporate studies executing over $1.5 trillion in buying and selling quantity throughout over 400 tokens for about 600 establishments.
The agency has pursued strategic growth in institutional crypto markets, buying derivatives platform Arbelos Markets in January 2025 and partnering with liquidity and information options supplier TP ICAP’s Fusion Digital Belongings in February final yr.
In the meantime, CME Group claims that its crypto derivatives market has demonstrated substantial development, with common each day quantity reaching 202,000 contracts in early 2025, representing a 73% enhance year-over-year.
The alternate studies common open curiosity of 243,600 contracts, up 55% year-over-year, with greater than 11,300 distinctive accounts buying and selling its crypto merchandise.
On centralized crypto exchanges, Solana derivatives present a 66% quantity enhance to $7.24 billion, protecting a bullish bias with a number of lengthy/brief ratios above 2, regardless of some $12.29 million in 24-hour liquidations, information from Coinglass reveals.
Solana is down 6.4% to $127, and stays below strain following its January all-time excessive close to $293.31, CoinGecko information reveals.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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