NASDAQ stock exchange teams up with the investment management company VanEck to bring a host of new crypto financial products to the market. This important partnership was revealed during CoinDesk’s Consensus: Invest Conference.
Gabor Gurbacs, VanEck’s director of digital asset strategy, revealed the move to “bring a regulated crypto 2.0 futures-type contract” to the market.
According to him, they will release early next year the very first of more such products.
“What I’d like to point out is we ran a few extra miles working with the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] to bring about new standards for custody and surveillance,” Gurbacs commented during a panel.
Upgrading current regulatory standards
During an interview, he told CoinDesk that the futures products represent a sort of upgrade to the current regulatory measures that are surrounding BTC futures products.
Gurbacs said that they would leverage NASDAQ’s stock markets surveillance system called SMARTS and the primary goal is to inspire confidence with regulators and also institutions who are considering penetrating the crypto space.
By now, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved two BTC futures product: one that’s operated by the Chicago Board Options Exchange in partnership with Gemini Exchange and the other one that’s operated by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Crypto Facilities.
It’s also important to note that Gurbacs did not disclose whether the BTC futures product between NASDAQ and VanEck’s price indexing arm MVIS would be cash-backed.
2019 will be the year of regulation
On the other hand, he said that there are a lot of things to look forward to for the next year and he highlighted a launch date for the BTC futures product that’s sometime in the first quarter of 2019.
More than that, the physical backed BTC exchange-traded fund that’s been proposed by VanEck with SolidX is also expected to reach a final decision by the SEC by February 27, 2019.
According to Gurbacs, the next year will be a fascinating one. He also made sure to add that 2018 was the year of regulation and 2019 will definitely be the year of implementation.