Bitcoin Cash rallied about 30% in a day after CME announced BCH futures. The contracts are scheduled to start trading on October 19, pending regulatory review. Grayscale’s ETF filing earlier
The Bitcoin Cash price climbed roughly 30% in 24 hours after CME Group said on September 22 that it will list BCH futures on October 19, subject to regulatory review. BCH traded near $349 on Wednesday according to CoinMarketCap, with a market capitalization of $7.02 billion and $1.66 billion in daily turnover, leaving it up about 60% over seven days. The listing would give Bitcoin Cash its first contract on the largest US-regulated derivatives venue, which matters both for funds barred from spot crypto and for the ETF application Grayscale filed earlier this month.
CME published the release at 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday. Within 90 minutes BCH had jumped from $270 to $328 on Binance, and it reached $340 later that session, CryptoPotato reported. Buyers returned on Wednesday. The daily candle opened at $345.1 and hit an intraday high of $362.6.
Get ready to trade new larger- and Micro-sized Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures in our 24/7, CFTC-regulated marketplace. pic.twitter.com/uixnqsgMjV
— CME Group (@CMEGroup) September 22, 2026
Uniswap, the second token in the announcement, gained about 15% and moved back above $10. BCH had spent most of September below $270, which left it more room to reprice.
A standard Bitcoin Cash contract covers 250 BCH, and the Micro version covers 25 BCH. The Micro size targets smaller funds and advisers who need exposure in steps below $10,000. Both will trade on CME Globex, where the exchange began around-the-clock crypto trading on May 29.
BCH futures
250 BCH
~$87,500 per contract
Micro BCH futures
25 BCH
~$8,750 per contract
UNI futures
10,000 UNI
~$100,000 per contract
Micro UNI futures
1,000 UNI
~$10,000 per contract
Notional values estimated at BCH $350 and UNI $10. Launch set for October 19, pending regulatory review.
The new contracts join a lineup that already includes Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche and Sui. In the first half of 2026, CME’s crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts a day, worth $8.3 billion in notional value. Volatility Shares, an issuer of futures-based crypto ETFs, endorsed the launch in the release. That endorsement counts because a regulated futures contract is exactly what a futures-based ETF needs.
Many US pension funds, advisers and bank desks cannot trade on offshore venues such as Binance, which host most BCH derivatives trading today. A CME contract clears through CME Clearing under CFTC oversight, which brings BCH inside their mandates. Miners and OTC desks also get a regulated way to hedge.
Futures on regulated venues usually trade at a premium to spot during rallies. Funds capture that spread by buying spot BCH and selling futures at the same time, so every position starts with a spot purchase. Traders tend to buy ahead of that demand.
Under the generic listing standards the SEC approved in September 2025, a crypto ETF can list without a separate rule-change approval if its underlying asset has traded as a futures contract on a regulated US market for at least six months. Grayscale filed to convert its Bitcoin Cash Trust into an ETF in an amended registration dated September 11, and the filing states that the listing basis has not been approved and no date can be given. An October 19 CME launch would put the six-month mark in April 2027. Neither Grayscale nor the SEC has confirmed that timeline.
Liquidity will take time. The five altcoin futures CME added this year have produced just over $1 billion in combined notional value in nine months.
BCH was already trading on fundamentals before Tuesday. The Layla upgrade in May 2026 expanded its scripting language with loops, reusable functions and bitwise operations, but the price barely moved at the time, and the September rally came from market access news instead.
September 18
Markets react to Grayscale’s filing for an NYSE Arca listing of its BCH trust. BCH gains about 12% to around $261.
September 21-22
US spot Bitcoin ETFs take in a record net inflow of about $999 million. BTC reaches $87,395, its highest since January.
September 22
CME announces BCH and UNI futures. BCH moves from $270 to $328 in 90 minutes.
September 23
The rally extends into a second session with an intraday high of $362.6.
October 19
Planned first trading day for CME Bitcoin Cash futures.
May 15, 2027
Next scheduled Bitcoin Cash network upgrade.
BCH/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView, Alexander Stefanov
BCH bottomed near $185 in late June, and every pullback since has stopped higher, at about $200 in mid-August and $213 in mid-September. The highs rose from $255 in July to a $305 wick in August and $362.6 this week. The price now sits about 40% above its 20-day moving average of $253.1, a gap that rarely holds for long. Volume on the breakout was the heaviest since the early-June sell-off.
The 14-day RSI reads 80.83. It means buyers have pushed the price up faster than usual over the past two weeks. BCH last reached this zone during the August spike, and within four weeks it slid from about $305 back to $215. A high reading alone is no reversal signal. It does show how little of this week’s gain has been tested by sellers.
Resistance
$362.6 – Wednesday’s intraday high
$380-$400 – mid-May range before the June sell-off
Support
$300-$305 – August peak
$260-$270 – pre-announcement zone
$253 – 20-day moving average
CME attached “pending regulatory review” to both products, so the launch date can still move. A delay would remove one of the main supports under this week’s price.
Once trading starts, the gap between CME futures and spot BCH becomes the number to watch. A wide premium would point to funds setting up basis trades, while a flat one would suggest spot buyers got ahead of institutional demand. CME’s daily open interest reports will show the same thing from another angle.
CME has followed this sequence before. It launched Solana futures in March 2025 and XRP futures in May 2025, and US spot ETFs for both tokens began trading in the final months of that year.
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