The CME Group in Chicago, Illinois, is proving to be one of the biggest and most influential establishments in the entire crypto community.
The CME Group Is Heading for the Top
The company has gone on to break all kinds of records with its latest bitcoin futures options, which became available in late January of this year. The firm has already managed to outdo the likes of Bakkt, which arguably had greater publicity going into the bitcoin futures market and had more of a leadup before its doors were opened and its services became available.
Now that the bitcoin market is suffering, CME says it’s experienced a heavy shortage of trades, though it’s still managing to do better than Bakkt, which has seen almost no trading whatsoever since late February. To make up for its trading losses in the futures department, one hopeful executive is looking to make a difference and has suggested the firm enter the arenas of crypto mining and token issuing.
This could potentially put CME in competition with the likes of Libra, the new cryptocurrency project brought forth by Facebook. Libra is an all-around digital payments network that will occur through the Libra cryptocurrency, which can be used through Facebook to purchase goods and services. Libra is allegedly backed by a long list of fiat and stable currencies, including USD, the euro and the yuan.
The man suggesting that CME take this new route is Dante Federighi, who filed a motion with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that he hopes will get him elected to the position of CME director. He says that should he excel to this position he will turn CME Group into something much bigger than it already is – a company that will issue CME tokens and ultimately “Improve liquidity.”
In a statement, Federighi described what would allegedly be CME Group’s new dealings in detail:
Digitize and fractionalize B-shares into hundredths of a membership. Let them trade freely on a blockchain where all transactions and ownership are recorded… While this seems outside of our core competencies, I’d argue this is our business: we, like the miners, match and clear trades.
Maybe Wait on the Mining Goals…
To be fair, however, it may be in CME Group’s best interest to wait for the bitcoin and crypto markets to heal a little before it enters the mining space. Several crypto mining companies in California and elsewhere, i.e. Digital Farms, are being forced to close their doors indefinitely given that mining is no longer profitable at the present time.
Bitcoin has taken too much of a tumble in recent weeks for miners to earn the same level of rewards, and with the upcoming halving scheduled for May, it doesn’t look like crypto mining is set to possess many benefits in the coming months if bitcoin remains as it is.
