CME Halts Nasdaq QBTC Bitcoin Options, Seeks SEC Review

CME Group asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to review and stayed the agency’s May approval of Nasdaq PHLX’s QBTC Bitcoin index options, freezing the product’s launch. The SEC granted CME’s petition for review on July 29 and the approval has been suspended since CME filed notice of its challenge on June 11. Public statements in the case are due Aug. 24 and the commission has not set a deadline for a final decision.

Nasdaq’s QBTC design would be a cash-settled option exercisable at expiration. Intraday pricing would link to the CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index and final settlement would use the New York variant of the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate. Each contract’s multiplier would give it roughly the economic exposure of one Bitcoin. Nasdaq proposed that investors could trade the options through the brokerage and clearing infrastructure used for stocks and ETF options, and that the Options Clearing Corporation would clear the contracts in its SEC-regulated capacity.

CME’s petition argues Bitcoin is a non-security commodity and that a direct option on its price is a commodity-option swap under the Commodity Exchange Act, placing the product within the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s exclusive jurisdiction. SEC staff relied on Exchange Act Section 3B and Section 717 of the Dodd-Frank Act to say a CFTC exemption conditioned on concurrent SEC jurisdiction could treat qualifying contracts as securities. The SEC’s May approval noted that QBTC could not launch without any required relief from the CFTC and left the launch conditioned on CFTC action.

The petition highlights a classification issue: staff’s approach would treat the QBTC contract as a security while leaving Bitcoin and the underlying index as non-securities. CME raised concerns about uncertainty over margining, customer account rules, reporting and clearing requirements for a contract that could be subject to oversight by both agencies. The filing also contends SEC staff exceeded delegated authority by adopting the interpretation without a vote of the full commission.

CME framed the matter as both a jurisdictional question and a commercial dispute. The company noted that its U.S. crypto derivatives business averaged 407,200 contracts per day in 2026, a 46% increase from a year earlier, with average daily open interest of 335,400 contracts. CME pointed to its October 2025 certification of options tied to the BRRNY benchmark, which were sized at 0.01 Bitcoin per contract and cleared under CFTC rules, and said QBTC would carry roughly 100 times that reference exposure.

The SEC commissioners must decide whether to affirm, modify, overturn or return the May approval for further proceedings. If CME prevails at the commission, Nasdaq’s current path to list QBTC would be closed. If Nasdaq prevails, the exchange would still need any required CFTC exemptions for listing and approvals for the Options Clearing Corporation to clear the contracts, along with updates to the Options Disclosure Document. Until the commissioners act and any necessary CFTC decisions follow, Nasdaq PHLX’s QBTC product remains on hold.