CME Plans Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap Futures for a 19 October Launch

CME Group plans to list futures on Bitcoin Cash and on Uniswap's UNI token from 19 October, pending regulatory review. The Chicago exchange announced the contracts in a release at 8:30 a.m. New York time on Tuesday. Each asset gets two sizes. The standard Bitcoin Cash contract covers 250 BCH and the micro contract 25 BCH, while the Uniswap pair is set at 10,000 UNI and 1,000 UNI. The additions join nine single-asset crypto futures already on CME's books, five of them launched this year.

Four contracts, one open detail

The contract sizes match across the release, The Block's report at 9:56 a.m. and the versions carried by Investing.com and Phemex. Investing.com adds that both products will trade on CME Globex, the exchange's electronic platform. Settlement is less well documented. The Crypto Times reports that both contracts settle in cash, in dollars, against CME CF reference rates, so no tokens change hands at expiry. Phemex noted that its source gave no settlement method. We did not find those terms in the parts of the release we read, so the cash-settlement detail rests on one outlet for now.

UNI is the governance token of the Uniswap exchange protocol. It joins a single-asset lineup that today covers bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche and Sui, according to The Block and Investing.com.

The volume CME is building on

CME's crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts a day in the first half of 2026, worth $8.3 billion in notional value, the release said. The Block, Investing.com and The Crypto Times all carry the same pair of figures. Average open interest, the value of positions still open, ran at 264,600 contracts, or $15.4 billion. That number appears in the release alone. The five contracts added this year, on Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche and Sui, have traded more than $1 billion in combined notional value so far in 2026. That figure is cumulative, not daily. XRP futures have drawn their own attention, with leveraged funds doubling their net short at the start of the month.

"As crypto markets continue to mature, participants require broader, regulated tools to navigate evolving digital asset related price risk," said Giovanni Vicioso, CME's global head of cryptocurrency products.

The release also quotes Noel Kimmel, president of Ripple Prime, who said institutions "need around-the-clock access to regulated derivatives, underpinned by the clearing and financing infrastructure to match."

Round the clock, from a disputed start

The new contracts arrive in a market that already trades all week. The Block dates CME's 24/7 crypto futures and options to June 2026 and says the opening weekend traded $50 million across more than 7,200 contracts. CoinDesk had reported round-the-clock trading from late May. The two start dates do not reconcile. Neither changes when BCH and UNI begin. CME is also in court over a rival product. It sued the CFTC in June over the agency's approval of a bitcoin perpetual contract, and the regulator asked a judge in early September to toss CME's perpetual futures lawsuit on standing grounds.

What 19 October has to show

The Crypto Times links the timing to two developments it reports alone. Grayscale filed this month to convert a Bitcoin Cash product into an ETF, the outlet says, and the SEC recently allowed limited trading of tokenized stocks through automated market maker pools, which it says has lifted interest in Uniswap. Neither point is confirmed elsewhere in this sweep. The same outlet added a caution of its own: "a listing is not the same as a liquid market." The regulatory review still has to clear. After that, opening-week volume and how closely the futures track spot prices will show whether the demand CME describes turns into trading.