Did they intentionally price this contract out of reach for retail hands or something? To me, 1 btc per contract seems like a good starting point, why 5 btc per contract? The current margin requirement for 5 btc at its 3x leverage is over $70k! What small retail trader has that much collateral to put up for a single trade?! How am I supposed to margin trade bitcoin legally here in the US without using a VPN or otherwise risk my funds getting confiscated like with bitmex, etc?
That's very common when you trade with a listed exchanges. For instance like crude oil, a single contract are 100 barrels, not 1 or 10 barrel. There's no such thing of 0.1 contract offered by those shady exchanges. You still can't open an account with CME if you are just retail even you have enough fund to pay for margin. You have to go through for instance like IB, TD Ameritrade etc to trade with direct CME. Also, you have to pay for live feed fees when you trade direct with exchanges.