CME Group is preparing to extend its crypto franchise beyond bitcoin and ether with listed options on Solana and XRP futures, targeting an Oct. 13 start pending regulatory review.
The move would give institutions and active traders new tools to hedge or express views on two of the market’s most traded altcoins while staying inside a U.S. clearinghouse framework.
The exchange said the options will be available on both the standard and micro-sized futures for SOL and XRP, mirroring a setup that has helped draw liquidity to its bitcoin and ether complexes.
CME also plans to list expiries every business day, plus monthly and quarterly cycles, a cadence designed to build a continuous volatility surface that market makers can price and risk manage.
The launch follows brisk uptake in the underlying futures this year. Since debuting on March 17, Solana futures have traded more than 540,000 contracts, or about $22.3 billion in notional value.
XRP futures, which started on May 19, have traded more than 370,000 contracts, or $16.2 billion in notional terms.
August set records for both products, with Solana average daily open interest reaching the equivalent of $895 million and XRP hitting $942 million, according to CME.
Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group’s global head of cryptocurrency products, said the options plan reflects rising depth and activity in the newer contracts.
In a press release he said, The launch of these options contracts builds on the significant growth and increasing liquidity we have seen across our suite of Solana and XRP futures.
Listed options create a regulated venue for implied volatility and skew in SOL and XRP, enabling strategies that have long been standard in BTC and ETH.
Options tied to micro-sized futures can lower entry costs and margin requirements, which may broaden participation for hedgers and tactical traders who size positions more finely.
Listed expiries every business day allow more precise event hedging around network upgrades, macro releases, and flows linked to fund rebalancing. These features have historically helped concentrate liquidity at CME in other asset classes, which can tighten spreads and improve price discovery over time.
The timing also underscores how quickly altcoin markets have matured on regulated venues in 2025.
CME’s bitcoin and ether options are already staples for traditional funds and proprietary trading firms. Extending a similar architecture to SOL and XRP gives those same desks a way to manage correlation, basis, and cross-volatility trades across a wider crypto set without shifting to offshore frameworks.
The exchange’s clearing model and capital treatment are familiar to risk officers, which has been a practical gating factor for many institutions evaluating crypto exposure.
CME has not published those specifications publicly beyond pointing to the two contract sizes and the planned expiry schedule.
Firms that provide liquidity in crypto options off exchange will watch the margin offsets they can obtain when pairing CME options with related CME crypto futures that can determine whether spreads and calendar structures migrate on screen quickly or develop first through negotiated blocks.
