Chainlink, Cardano and Stellar Futures Begin Trading on CME Next Month
TL;DR
CME Group will launch futures contracts for Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar on February 9, offering both standard and micro sizes. This expansion aims to provide regulated products for price risk management amid crypto growth, building on CME's existing crypto offerings like Bitcoin and Ethereum futures.
Tags
CME Group, operator of the world's largest financial derivatives exchange, will add Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar futures contracts to its crypto offerings on February 9.
The new ADA, LINK, and LXM contracts are still pending regulatory review, the firm said in a press release Thursday. The contracts will be offered both in standard and micro sizes for all three cryptocurrencies: 100,000 ADA and 10,000 for the micro; 5,000 LINK and 250 for the micro; and 250,000 XLM and 12,500 for the micro.
"Given crypto's record growth over the last year, clients are looking for trusted, regulated products to manage price risk," Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group's global head of cryptocurrency products, said in the press release.
At the time of writing, ADA was trading for $0.398 after having dropped 5% in the past day. Meanwhile, LINK has fallen 3% since yesterday and was recently changing hands for $13.91; and Stellar's XLM was trading for $0.231 after losing 4.5% in the past 24 hours, according to crypto price aggregator CoinGecko.
The crypto expansion builds on CME's role as an early destination for Bitcoin futures. The exchange was one of the first to offer Bitcoin futures contracts in December 2017. CME's existing crypto menu already includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP futures and options.
The firm also maintains CME CF Cryptocurrency Benchmarks, which are reference rates and real-time indices used to standardize pricing data. Arbitrum, Ondo, Near, and Sui were recently added to the benchmarks data, but there's been no word yet of CME creating futures contracts for those assets.
As it stands, crypto options and futures saw record-high trading volume in 2025. Average daily contract volume was 278,300 for the crypto contracts, representing $12 billion in notional value. And average open interest set a record of 313,900 contracts, the equivalent of $26.4 billion in notional value.
"As one of the world's largest traders of crypto futures, Volatility Shares is excited to see more regulated financial products available for trading and risk management," Justin Young, CEO and co-founder of Volatility Shares, said in the press release.