CME Group Inc. is planning to launch a new daily Bitcoin benchmark and a real-time rate in the fourth quarter, the Chicago-based derivatives marketplace announced on Monday.
The firm says that it is working with digital assets trading platform Crypto Facilities Ltd. to develop two new products: CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), which will provide a final settlement price in U.S. dollars at 4 p.m. London time each trading day; and CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index (RTI), which will provide real-time access to Bitcoin prices.
The planned BRR “will aggregate the trade flow of major Bitcoin spot exchanges during a specific calculation window into a once-a-day, transparent reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of Bitcoin,” CME Group says in a statement.
BRR has been designed to follow the global principles for financial benchmarks that have been developed in the wake of the LIBOR market manipulation scandal, CME Group notes. As part of that effort, CME Group, Crypto Facilities and Imperial College London will form an oversight committee to provide governance for the BRR. The committee will develop a code of conduct for participants, and it will regularly review the practices and standards used in calculating the benchmark.
RTI will be based on the global demand to buy and sell Bitcoin aggregated into a consolidated order book, and will be calculated by Crypto Facilities. “It will reflect the current market price of Bitcoin in U.S. dollar terms and will be published approximately once every second,” CME Group says.
“These products are designed to allow Bitcoin traders, companies and other users to rely on a credible reference rate price source,” adds Sandra Ro, executive director and digitization lead at CME Group.
Several Bitcoin exchanges and trading platforms will provide pricing data that will be used to calculate the reference prices.