FalconX Carries Out ‘First’ CME Group Solana Futures Block Commerce

Digital asset prime dealer FalconX mentioned Saturday it has accomplished the “first-ever” block commerce for CME Group’s Solana futures with StoneX as counterparty, a day forward of the SOL futures launch of latest contracts anticipated on March 17.

The San Mateo, California headquartered dealer executed the transaction with the purpose of offering a manner “to handle threat and value publicity on a regulated venue,” Josh Barkhordar, head of U.S. gross sales on the agency mentioned in a statement.

A block commerce on this context is a large-volume, privately negotiated transaction of the futures contracts, accomplished exterior the open market to keep away from disrupting the asset’s value.

CME Group debuted the Solana futures contract in late February to fulfill “rising shopper demand,” because it vies to place the providing as a precursor and “main pre-requisite” to a SOL ETF.

​Several asset management firms have filed purposes with the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee to launch Solana ETFs.

Notably, Franklin Templeton, managing over $1.5 trillion in belongings, submitted a submitting in late February 2025. Different corporations, together with Grayscale, 21Shares, Bitwise, VanEck, and Canary Capital, have additionally filed for spot Solana ETFs.

Solana futures comply with the sample established with Bitcoin and Ethereum, the place futures buying and selling preceded ETF authorization and approval from a regulatory physique.

The brand new contracts are available in two sizes: customary contracts representing 500 SOL and micro contracts representing 25 SOL.

The futures are then cash-settled primarily based on the CME CF Solana-Greenback Reference Price, calculated every day at 4:00 p.m. London time, offering a standardized benchmark for SOL’s U.S. greenback value.

FalconX operates as a key liquidity supplier for CME Group’s crypto derivatives suite. The corporate experiences executing over $1.5 trillion in buying and selling quantity throughout over 400 tokens for roughly 600 establishments.

The agency has pursued strategic enlargement in institutional crypto markets, buying derivatives platform Arbelos Markets in January 2025 and partnering with liquidity and information options supplier TP ICAP’s Fusion Digital Property in February final 12 months.

In the meantime, CME Group claims that its crypto derivatives market has demonstrated substantial progress, with common every day quantity reaching 202,000 contracts in early 2025, representing a 73% improve year-over-year. 

The alternate experiences common open curiosity of 243,600 contracts, up 55% year-over-year, with greater than 11,300 distinctive accounts buying and selling its crypto merchandise.

On centralized crypto exchanges, Solana derivatives present a 66% quantity improve to $7.24 billion, overlaying a bullish bias with a number of lengthy/brief ratios above 2, regardless of some $12.29 million in 24-hour liquidations, data from Coinglass exhibits.

Solana is down 6.4% to $127, and stays underneath strain following its January all-time excessive close to $293.31, CoinGecko data exhibits.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair