Combined with our existing Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP products, the introduction of Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures now provide access to over 75% of the crypto market capitalization^[1]. Our expanded crypto suite serves as the foundation for our Nasdaq CME Crypto Index  futures coming March 16,pending regulatory review, allowing investors to replicate the index or manage basis risk across its primary constituents.

Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar operate across distinct sectors of the digital economy, each with unique characteristics as detailed in the following table.

2025 was a record year for our Cryptocurrency product suite, with an average daily volume (ADV) of 278,300 contracts, representing approximately $12 billion in notional value. This growth is further illustrated in the chart below, which tracks notional ADV and average daily open interest (ADOI) since inception.

The expansion of our Cryptocurrency products, together with the unique risk-return profiles of the coins, offers more tools and flexibility for investors to execute their crypto strategies. These strategies include, but are not limited to:

Inter-commodity spreads (Altcoin vs. Major): The availability of Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures allows for the execution of inter-commodity spreads against one another and existing Crypto futures. This provides a mechanism for isolating the idiosyncratic risk of specific blockchain sectors, such as decentralized oracle networks or payment protocols, while offsetting broader market beta.

Relative value: These contracts enable investors to capitalize on potential price dislocations between crypto tokens. By deploying long-short pairs, participants can seek to capture potential convergence toward historical price ratios.

Sector-specific risk management: The introduction of these sector-representative instruments enables targeted hedging. Institutions can mitigate exposure to specific thematic risks, such as shifts in the DeFi landscape, without requiring the liquidation of underlying spot positions.

Arbitrage, basis and price discovery: Centrally cleared, cash-settled futures provide a transparent benchmark for arbitrage against spot exchanges, offshore platforms and ETFs. This promotes greater market efficiency and tighter bid-ask spreads across the digital asset ecosystem by aligning regulated and unregulated liquidity pools.

The correlation matrix below measures the relationship between the spot cryptocurrencies.

^{Source: TradingView}

Bitcoin and ether exhibit the strongest positive correlation at 0.81. As the two largest assets by market capitalization, both benefit from extensive investor adoption.

Our new offerings (ADA, LINK and Lumens) maintain moderate-to-high correlations with bitcoin (0.60-0.67), suggesting they follow broad market trends yet provide unique, idiosyncratic exposure. Notable cross-correlations exist between assets with similar functions, such as the 0.75 correlation between XRP and Lumens, reflecting their shared focus on the cross-border payment sector. Conversely, Solana (SOL) displays the lowest average correlation to the broader group, especially with Lumens (0.43).

While current correlations reflect a market largely influenced by bitcoin and ether, continued adoption of alt-coins is expected to facilitate further decoupling as fundamental protocol distinctions become drivers of price discovery.

The scatter plot below illustrates the annualized returns of these cryptocurrencies against their corresponding risk over a five-year period. This provides a framework for assessing tokens against individual risk appetites, demonstrating the historical trade-off between annualized volatility and gains.

Assets positioned toward the top left of the chart indicate a higher risk-reward profile. As the most established cryptocurrency, bitcoin occupies the lowest position on the risk-reward spectrum. Ether serves as a midpoint, historically providing higher returns than bitcoin between 2020 and 2025, though accompanied by a corresponding increase in price fluctuations.

Solana (SOL) occupies the high-growth, high-volatility segment of the market, as evidenced by its position in the upper-right quadrant. Meanwhile, XRP, ADA, LINK, and Lumens are clustered within a similar risk-return range. Their proximity suggests the market prices of these assets with comparable expectations, although their varying protocol utilities provide distinct fundamental diversification for investors.

As market participants increasingly differentiate between protocol-specific value drivers, these risk-return profiles may evolve, potentially leading to a more defined separation between the assets.

The addition of Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures to our Crypto suite signals the continued maturation of the digital asset market. By offering regulated, cash-settled instruments for these assets, we empower clients with the tools necessary for more precise risk management and exposure. Although the broader market still tracks major cryptocurrencies, the distinct risk-return profiles of these relatively smaller assets provide new opportunities for portfolio diversification. As investors increasingly focus on protocol-specific value, these futures will be essential for price discovery and risk management within a secure, centrally cleared environment.

^{[1] According to coinmarketcap.com on February 13, 2026}