Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin’s value has been climbing since the recent opening of Cboe’s futures markets. The spot price of BTC had dipped a good 3 percent an hour prior to Cboe’s Sunday evening trading sessions, but volume immediately spiked at precisely 6 pm ET when the futures trading opened. At the moment bitcoin is hovering around the $15,700-15,950 range on Bitstamp, and Cboe’s bitcoin futures markets have been going wild.

Bitcoin’s Price Kicked Into High Gear At the Start of Cboe’s Opening Trading Sessions

Lately, bitcoin markets have been an astonishing observation as the price has been moving at warp speed towards record highs for over a week. Many people believe that Cboe and CME Group’s bitcoin-based futures products have been injecting markets with optimism. The price slumped this past weekend after coming awfully close to the $17K territory reaching a low of $13,000. However, on December 10 bitcoin’s value kicked into high gear during the morning trading sessions reaching $15,300. Following this, the price had rapid swings ranging from $500-900 and markets were down just before Cboe opened its futures markets.

Cboe’s January Contracts Reach a High of $18,280

Cboe’s market contract bids started at $15,000, and they expire on January 8. At press time the firm’s bitcoin futures have surged over 15 percent reaching a high of $18,300. So far a few thousand contracts have been traded on Cboe’s derivatives exchange. Further according to the Wall Street Journal a spokeswoman from Cboe said trading stopped for 2 minutes due to volatile price swings. If the price moves during a massive swing, the exchange can impose a halt on trading. Additionally, Cboe’s website and XBT futures charts suffered from severe traffic, and the site was unavailable for a period of time. Cboe’s website states;

"Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable."

Full article - https://news.bitcoin.com/markets-update-bitcoins-value-climbs-after-cboe-opens-xbt-trading/

I don't really think these bitcoin futures will sustain, due to the great price volatility of bitcoins the price of even futures are quite hard to determine. Likely a lot of people will be disappointed in investing into these futures. But we'll see when time comes that those contracts expire. Anyway, that would just be a month from now. Likely bitcoin prices will be at more than what it is today.

I haven't read how things work over at CBOE, not sure though if they are actually buying bitcoins or things are just settled in cash. I don't think that is good for the economy of bitcoins as they are making something out of thin air. I hope I did understand that right though.

It has been on the news already this morning about the gains bitcoin has had since the futures trading.
Here ia an article by Jim Cramer host of 'mad money' he recons bitcoin will get 'ANNIHILATED'  ::)
https://api.cointelegraph.com/amp/v1/news/jim-cramer-bitcoin-is-monopoly-money-will-get-annihilated

This is very good news. A lot of hedge funds were complaining that there was no efficient way for them to short the market. Now that the futures have gone live, they don't have the courage to short the market.

This an oasis development for Bitcoin as this marked the start of Bitcoin's entry into the roster of many legitimate investment vehicles which have been traditionally in the market. Though we have to understand that it can take some time before we can conclude that futures contract trading is good for Bitcoin or not. I am hoping though that this can be a catalyst for more growth on Bitcoin and would not be an instrument that can slowly kill Bitcoin. Next year, we are expecting to see more exchanges getting into the futures market and there is a big possibility that SEC would finally approved the ETF applications.