Cboe and FTSE Russell Expands Collaboration to Drive Innovation in Digital Asset Derivatives

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe), the world's leading derivatives and securities exchange network, announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its collaboration with FTSE Russell, a leading global index provider, to drive product innovation in the digital assets space. 

This new initiative builds on Cboe and FTSE Russell's longstanding relationship and will leverage their combined expertise to develop new derivatives products, potentially beginning with cash-settled index options tied to the FTSE Bitcoin Index and the FTSE Ethereum Index.

According to the announcement, Cboe's plans to list cash-settled index options on FTSE's indices, subject to regulatory approvals, would help meet growing investor demand for exchange-traded derivatives to gain and manage crypto exposures in a trusted, transparent and U.S.-regulated trading environment.

"For many years, Cboe and FTSE Russell have worked together to offer index options based on FTSE Russell indices, which have grown into some of the world's most actively traded products," said Catherine Clay, Global Head of Derivatives at Cboe. "Our expanded relationship today mirrors that successful model of collaboration, combining Cboe's unrivalled derivatives expertise with FTSE's world-class indexing capabilities to potentially bring new solutions to the digital assets space. Derivatives has long been an area where Cboe excels, and now we are strategically expanding our expertise into the digital assets space. As these two asset classes converge, we look forward to driving continued innovation and our relationship with FTSE Russell will be key to this strategy."

The FTSE Bitcoin Index and FTSE Ethereum Index are part of the FTSE Digital Asset Indices Series, which is developed in partnership with Digital Asset Research (DAR). These indices are designed to capture the performance of bitcoin and ether, as determined by the FTSE DAR Reference Price, and provide institutional-quality, liquidity-screened exposure to the digital asset market.

Talking about the expanded collaboration, Fiona Bassett, CEO of FTSE Russell, said: "We are delighted to continue working alongside Cboe Global Markets, realizing our mutual commitment to enable new asset innovation in financial markets. Our indices are used by some of the largest crypto asset managers in the world for their best-in-class data and processes built to manage regulatory and trading risk – critical differentiators for the data in this asset class."