CME Doubles Down on Crypto: Four New Reference Rates & Real-Time Indices Go Live

Wall Street’s favorite derivatives playground just expanded its crypto toolkit. The CME—where trad-fi meets digital assets—unveiled four fresh reference rates and real-time indices today. Because nothing says ’mature asset class’ like institutional-grade price feeds.

These new benchmarks target altcoins beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, giving hedge funds more toys to play with. Expect tighter spreads, better arbitrage opportunities, and at least three investment banks claiming they ’saw this coming’ in their 2026 crypto forecasts.

Another brick in the wall of crypto legitimacy—or just more ammunition for the next volatility explosion? Either way, the suits are all-in. (And yes, we noticed the irony of traditional finance building the infrastructure for the ’decentralized’ revolution.)

CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, and CF Benchmarks, the leading provider of cryptocurrency benchmark indices, announced plans to launch four new cryptocurrency reference rates and real-time indices for Arbitrum, Ondo, NEAR and Sui.

These reference rates and indices are not tradable futures products.

“Our new benchmarks are designed to provide clear and transparent pricing data to a broad range of market participants, allowing them to more accurately value portfolios or create structured products,” said Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products. “With 28 cryptocurrencies in our suite of CME CF References Rates and Real-Time Indices, we will provide pricing benchmarks across more than 96% of the investible cryptocurrency market capitalization, further bringing reliable and trusted data to these growing assets in the crypto ecosystem.”

As with all existing CME CF Benchmark Reference Rates and Real-Time Indices, these new benchmarks will utilize pricing data from at least two of the current constituent exchanges for the CME CF Benchmark suite of reference rates and real-time indices, which include Bitstamp, Bullish, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini, itBit, Kraken and LMAX Digital.

“As the range of investible crypto assets continues to evolve and grow, institutions need benchmarks they can trust—benchmarks that meet the same standards of accuracy, transparency, and governance they expect in traditional finance,” said Sui Chung, CEO of CF Benchmarks. “The addition of Arbitrum, Ondo, NEAR, and sui to the CME CF Single Asset Series ensures that market participants can engage with these emerging tokens using indices and reference rates built on the same robust methodologies as the BRR and BRRNY for Bitcoin, which underpin more than $100 billion in regulated crypto financial products. This expansion reflects the accelerating institutionalization of digital assets and our ongoing commitment to supporting the next wave of regulated crypto financial products.”

Each of these new reference rates will provide the U.S. dollar price of each digital asset, published once-a-day at 4 p.m. London time, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Additionally, reference rates for ONDO and Sui will also be published once-a-day at 4 p.m. New York time.

Source: CME