Bitcoin Pricing Product Frequently Asked Questions

CME Group is the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, handling 3 billion contracts worth approximately $1 quadrillion annually (on average). We provide a marketplace for buyers and sellers, bringing together individuals, companies, and institutions that need to manage risk or that want to profit by accepting risk. Our exchanges, CME, CBOT, NYMEX, and COMEX, offer the widest range of global pricing products across all major asset classes including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural commodities, metals, weather, and real estate.

CME Group is committed to fostering open standards, diverse participation, and cultivating the highest standards and protocols as the crypto currency space and digital asset technology evolves. These products are designed to allow bitcoin traders, companies and other users to rely on a credible reference rate price source. This is an important step to making bitcoin trading more secure and accessible, and CME Group is proud to lead the way for the nascent industry as digital assets evolve.

The BRR aggregates the trade flow of major bitcoin spot exchanges during a specific calculation window into a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. Calculation rules are geared toward maximum transparency and real-time replicability in underlying spot markets.

The BRR will be published between 4PM and 4:30PM London time every day including weekends and holidays.

The BRTI aggregates global demand to buy and sell bitcoin into a consolidated order book that reflects the fair, instantaneous U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. It is geared toward low latency and timeliness and is based on forward looking input data.

The BRTI will be published approximately every second of every day including weekends and holidays.

An Oversight Committee, consisting of CME Group, Crypto Facilities and leading industry experts will regularly review the methodology and practice standards followed in the reference rate and index determination process to protect the integrity of the rates and ensure all CME CF Cryptocurrency Indices continue to be representative of the underlying markets.

A full description of the offering and other information can be found at:  http://www.cmegroup.com/bitcoin

There are 3 ways to access the data:

• CME Group website
• MDP (Market Data Platform) through channel 213
• Datamine

For more information on specifications, please visit the Cryptocurrency Pricing Data via Streamlined SBE WIKI

All customers are required to sign a Market Data License Agreement (MDLA) to license the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rates & CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index products.

No, customers will license only with Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. under the MDLA.

Customers can take the data directly from CME Group or they can subscribe to the data through a licensed third party data provider.

The reference rate and real time indices require separate licenses and therefore, a separate entitlement for each. Specific reporting and license codes will be communicated at a later time.

No, customers do not need to certify separately.

A fee waiver will be in place for all MDLA Schedule 2a defined Data Use Packages and Licenses. Please note that the creation and distribution of derived works using the BRR and BRTI is not covered under the fee waiver, and will require a separate Derived Data License Agreement.

Details of the Constituent Exchange Criteria and a list of Constituent Exchanges can be found on the CME Group Bitcoin webpage.

Details of the methodology can be found on the CME Group Cryptocurrency website.

Yes, historical data goes back to the inception of these rates (November 2016) and is available through our market data channels.

Back to Top