Bitcoin Cash jumps 27% as CME Group plans BCH and Uniswap futures

CME Group plans Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures for Oct. 19

CME Group said on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, that it plans to launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on Oct. 19, pending regulatory review. Futures are contracts that let traders agree on a price for an asset at a later date.

Bitcoin Cash rose 27% over the session and was the day's biggest move among the largest tokens. Bitcoin went the other way and ended lower, never reaching Monday's high.

Key points from the session

• Bitcoin Cash gained 14% in the hour CME Group published its listing release and kept climbing, finishing up 27% on more than twice Monday's volume.
• Bitcoin SV, which was not named in the release, rose 20%.
• Uniswap gained 11% in the same hour, gave the move back within two hours, then recovered to close up 5.4% over 24 hours.
• Bitcoin last traded at $86,232, down 0.7% over 24 hours and up 14% over seven days.
• Of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens, 64 rose and 61 fell.

What CME's release says

CME Group said it will launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on Oct. 19, subject to regulatory review. The contracts are sized at 250 BCH and 10,000 UNI, with micro versions at 25 BCH and 1,000 UNI.

Giovanni Vicioso, CME Group's global head of cryptocurrency products, said: "As crypto markets continue to mature, participants require broader, regulated tools to navigate evolving digital asset related price risk."

CME said its crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts a day in the first half of 2026, or $8.3 billion in notional value. Average open interest was 264,600 contracts, or $15.4 billion.

The exchange added Avalanche and Sui futures in April, and Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar futures in February. The two new contracts would take this year's additions to seven.

How Bitcoin Cash traded through the day

Bitcoin Cash held a 4.5% price band for the eight hours before the release. It then gained 14% in the hour that began at 8 a.m. ET, on 24,531 BCH of Coinbase volume. The average for the eight hours before that was 943 BCH. It added another 26,044 BCH in the hour after.

The token kept rising after the announcement hours passed. It reached its high of $347.03 in the hour beginning 3 p.m. ET, about 30% above the open of the UTC day, six hours after the release. Volume for the UTC day reached 105,586 BCH, against 48,265 on Monday.

Bitcoin Cash has a market value of $6.8 billion on $1.22 billion of daily volume, a turnover ratio of 18%. That was third among the 30 largest tokens, behind NEAR Protocol and Uniswap.

Bitcoin SV, which split from Bitcoin Cash in 2018, rose 20% to a $434 million market value.

Uniswap's spike faded, then partly recovered

Uniswap gained 11% in the same 8 a.m. ET hour, on 615,130 UNI of Coinbase volume. The average across the prior eight hours was 75,027 UNI. It reached $9.7384 in the next hour, fell to $8.97 by 10 a.m. ET, and recovered through the afternoon to $9.296, up 3.4% on the UTC day and 5.4% over 24 hours.

Most of the token's 44% weekly gain came before the CME release, according to the report. Uniswap turned over $1.54 billion against a $5.8 billion market value, a ratio of 27%.

Bitcoin slipped as market breadth split

Bitcoin opened the UTC day at $86,595 on Coinbase and traded between $85,059 and $86,734. It never reached Monday's $87,397 high. Ether was at $2,751, down 1.5% on the day and up 15% over seven days.

XRP rose 4.1% to $1.58 and Zcash 2.3% to $1,510. BNB fell 2.4% to $785, Solana 0.8% to $118 and Dogecoin 0.3% to $0.10.

Total crypto market value stood at $2.94 trillion on $125 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 59%. Weighted by market value, the 250 largest tokens fell 0.5% over 24 hours and rose 13% over seven days.

Monday's US spot bitcoin ETF inflows neared $1 billion

US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in $999.0 million on Monday, according to Farside Investors, compared with $6.1 million across the five sessions of the previous week. An ETF is a fund that trades on a stock exchange and holds the underlying asset.

BlackRock's IBIT took $381.4 million, ARK's ARKB $289.1 million, Fidelity's FBTC $238.8 million and Morgan Stanley's MSBT $61.7 million. Spot ether ETFs took in $270.0 million, including $110.1 million at BlackRock's ETHA, after a net outflow of $140.6 million the week before.

Farside had not posted figures for Tuesday in either fund group as of the close.

Two analysts read the same ETF data differently

Oliver Carding, head of marketing at Tesseract Group, said in commentary sent to reporters that the rally is not yet supported by fund flows. "A rally that runs while the year is in net redemption is a positioning move rather than an allocation one," he said. He cited the roughly $6 million net week for US spot bitcoin funds and said those funds are still down about $1.45 billion across 2026 as a whole.

Carding also pointed to the Sept. 17 reopening of the 10-year TIPS, which cleared at 2.653%, the highest at that auction since 2008, according to Treasury auction data. He said he would want sustained inflows before calling the move durable.

Paul Howard, senior director at Wincent, read the same flows the other way in the same email. "The move increasingly looks sustainable, with ETF flows providing support around the $80,000-$85,000 range," he said, adding that he would describe the setup as "constructive rather than definitive."

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 78, or extreme greed, on Tuesday, against 70 on Monday and 56 on Friday, according to Alternative.me.

Funding rates stayed close to zero

The OKX bitcoin perpetual swap carried a funding rate of 0.00019% for the period settling at midnight UTC, with a premium of -0.00048, meaning it traded below the index price. Its ether swap carried 0.0031% with a premium of -0.00046. On Deribit, eight-hour funding was 0.0083% for bitcoin and 0.0019% for ether.

Open interest was $2.6 billion on the OKX bitcoin swap and $847 million on the Deribit bitcoin perpetual. The bitcoin funding rate fell from 0.0081% for the period settling at 4 p.m. UTC to 0.00019% for the one settling at midnight.

DeFi total value locked stood at $96.4 billion, up 2.5% over 24 hours and 8.6% over seven days, according to DefiLlama. Stablecoin supply was $311.9 billion, up 0.50% over seven days and 1.2% over 30 days, and grew $1.68 billion on the day.

Front-month WTI crude settled at $89.84 against Monday's $95.78, a decline of 6.2% and a fifth consecutive session lower.

What is confirmed

• CME Group said it will launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on Oct. 19, pending regulatory review.
• Bitcoin Cash finished the session up 27%, and Bitcoin SV rose 20%.
• Bitcoin ended the day lower at $86,232, down 0.7% over 24 hours.
• US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $999.0 million on Monday, per Farside Investors.

What is still unclear

The release says the listing depends on regulatory review, and no approval has been announced. CME has published nothing further since the initial statement. A full-text search of SEC filings for "Bitcoin Cash" between Sept. 18 and Sept. 22 returned no registration or listing document for a Bitcoin Cash product.

Analysts do not agree on whether the broader rally is sustainable. Carding said the evidence does not yet support that view, while Howard called the setup constructive rather than definitive. Both comments were sent before Tuesday's ETF flow figures, which Farside had not posted as of the close.

Why this matters

CME's futures are traded on a regulated exchange, and the products give market participants a way to manage price risk in the assets they cover, according to the company's statement. Bitcoin Cash's move showed how quickly attention can shift to a smaller token named in an exchange announcement, while the wider market split almost evenly between gainers and losers.

What happens next

The planned launch date for the Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures is Oct. 19, assuming the contracts clear regulatory review.

Sources

• The Defiant