Nasdaq looking at bitcoin futures: source

Chicago

NASDAQ Inc is charging into the race to bring bitcoin to a greater swath of investors, as the digital currency's price barrelled beyond US$11,000 on Wednesday.

The New York-based exchange operator plans to introduce bitcoin futures next year, according to a person familiar with the matter, becoming the third major US exchange to dive into the red-hot market for cryptocurrencies.

Nasdaq will introduce the products as early as the second quarter, and the contracts will trade on its NFX market, according to the person. The plan is yet another sign of a large exchange operator pushing bitcoin further into the mainstream investing universe.

The offering will pit Nasdaq against two bigger competitors, CME Group Inc and Cboe Global Markets Inc, both of which already announced plans to offer cryptocurrency derivatives.

Nasdaq is a comparatively small player in the futures market, which may make it harder to cultivate an image as a destination for cryptocurrency derivatives trading. "They're a small futures exchange, so they possibly see the potential to get into a product that could be much larger some day," said Rich Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP.

The strategy also means that New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc is the only one of the four major US exchange operators without public plans to offer bitcoin derivatives.

One way Nasdaq seeks to differentiate itself seems to be in the amount of data it uses for pricing the digital currency contracts. VanEck Associates Corpwill supply the data used to price the contracts, pulling figures from more than 50 sources, according to the person. BLOOMBERG