The Brazilian Stock exchange, B3 confirmed that within six months it intends to launch its first official product aimed toward the cryptocurrency market — Bitcoin (BTC) futures trading.
The group’s chief treasurer, André Milanez, made the announcement during a conference call on Monday. Milanez failed to provide many details on how the merchandise will work. It’s not yet known if B3 will form a partnership or if it’ll offer Bitcoin futures trading directly, but the timeline for launching this product was stated to be relatively short.
“We plan to launch bitcoin futures in the next three to six months,” Milanez said.
As The Crypto Times reported earlier, B3 was planning to step into the crypto market in 2022 and this step confirms that B3 is committed to making its presence felt in the crypto world.
In addition to BTC and ETH futures, B3 also intends to supply services to national cryptocurrency exchanges and to be a form of “centralizer” of custody and settlement operations, as per Jochen Mielke de Lima:
“We have around 30 national crypto exchanges, apart from the international ones that operate here. We could offer a service to facilitate and standardize their operations. I believe it has something to explore in providing custody services and in the settlement process.”
In Brazil, institutional and retail investors can currently trade 11 ETFs via B3 with exposure to cryptocurrencies, which include CRPT11 from Empiricus with Vitreo; the NFTS11 of Investo; QBTC11, QETH11 and QDFI11 all from QR Assets and META11, HASH11, BITH11, ETHE11, DEFI11, WEB311 all from Hashdex.
