In brief
- CME Group is considering launching its own coin on a decentralized network.
- The exchange plans to move all crypto products to 24/7 trading in early 2026, pending regulatory approval.
- Crypto trading volumes hit records in 2025, with Q4 daily volume up 92% to over $13 billion.
CME Group, owner of the world’s largest derivatives exchange operator by trading volume, said it’s actively considering launching its own coin and moving all of its crypto products to 24/7 trading during its Q4 earnings call on Wednesday.
CME Group Chairman and CEO Terrence Duffy was responding to a question from Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys about the factors at play in allowing traders to use stablecoins, tokenized deposit tokens, or tokenized funds as collateral.
He said the company has a tokenized cash “initiative” that’s being rolled out with Google later this year. The tokenization deal with the tech giant was announced March 2025, and promised to deliver “secure wholesale payments and tokenization of assets.”
“So not only are we looking at tokenized cash, obviously, we’re looking at different initiatives with our own coin that we could potentially put on a decentralized network for other of our industry participants to use,” Duffy said during the Wednesday morning earnings call. “So there’s multiple different ways that we’re approaching this to create efficiencies for our clients going forward, without introducing any additional risk to the system.”
Potentially launching a coin on a decentralized, public network is a key distinction from some of CME’s Wall Street competitors. Citigroup, which has claimed that “tokenization really could be the next big thing,” has taken the same route as JPMorgan in that it’s using a token and private network to facilitate faster settlement for institutional clients.
Meanwhile, CME’s mention of around-the-clock trading for crypto funds isn’t brand new.
The company has been considering 24/7 trading for its crypto products for a while. Back in October 2025, the firm said its cryptocurrency futures and options would begin trading around the clock in “early 2026, pending regulatory review.”
At the time, the firm was getting ready to launch its XRP and Solana futures. And since then, CME Group has also added Chainlink, Cardano, and Stellar to its suite of crypto products.
CME also reported that cryptocurrency trading volumes hit record levels in 2025, with average daily volume up 92% year over year in the fourth quarter, representing more than $13 billion in notional value traded per day.
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