The CFTC Chairman says we could have Ether futures by 2020

Heath Tarbert the Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said that we could see an Ether futures contract at some point next year.

Mr Tarbert was attending the DC Fintech Week and he stated: 

“I’d say it is likely that you would see a futures contrast in the next six months to a year,” when refering to Ether.

“The volume to which it’ll trade, no idea, that’s where the markets decide, but my guess is now that we’ve provided at least … a little bit more clarity on [ether’s eligibility for futures contracts], my guess is market participants will consider that.”

Earlier in the month, the CFTC chairman said that he considers Ether to be a commodity just like Bitcoin. In regards to how the new contract would start up Mr Tarbert said:

“Now in the past most people have not been self-certifying, they’ve been coming to us particularly if they’re creating an entirely new exchange and DCO [derivatives clearing organization] so it’ll depend I think in large part on who wants to have it on their trading platform. Is it one of our existing exchanges that’s been working with the CFTC for years or is it an entirely new platform that wants to specialize in it?”

Then on the subject of pricing, he added: “What our markets do, and [have been] doing for 150 years is ensure there’s sufficient price transparency,” 

Then the question was asked about how many more cryptocurrencies could be added to the list but this is where the CFTC chairman backed off and said:

“As the the SEC sort of works through its process [and] we work through ours and other regulators, it’s likely we’ll see more but I can’t tell this audience that it’s necessarily coming soon because even the two that we thought about – bitcoin and ether – it took us quite some time to work through those.”