The Ethereum (ETH) rate jumped by 10%: the reason

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is willing to approve an ether futures contract – provided it ticks all the right boxes, a senior official has told CoinDesk. The CFTC, which oversees derivatives markets in the U.S., has already allowed bitcoin futures markets to launch, with both CME Group and Cboe Global Exchange offering cash-settled contracts at the end of 2017. Now, the regulator is willing to oversee a similar product for ether, currently the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, said the official.

“I think we can get comfortable with an ether derivative being under our jurisdiction,” said the person, who did not want to be identified because the regulator does not typically publicize decisions to adopt new products.

“We don’t do bold pronouncements, what we do is we look at applications before us,” the official said, explaining: “A derivatives exchange comes to us and says ‘we want to launch this particular product.’ … If they came to us with a particular derivative that met our requirements, I think that there’s a good chance that it would be [allowed to be] self-certified by us.”

However, the CFTC would only respond to a specific application put before the regulator, rather than volunteer an opinion, the individual said.

The CFTC first indicated it was looking at ethereum in December when the regulator published a “Request for Input” (RFI) asking a number of questions about the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, the market around it and the underlying technology.