Bitcoin Forum

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-futures-volume-spike-as-cboe-awaits-etf-decision/

Everyone knows that bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have been on a steady decline since the last month of 2017. While digital asset spot prices have been quite volatile, bitcoin futures products provided by two of the world’s largest derivatives exchanges, Cboe and CME Group, have seen a steady increase in trade volume and more liquidity within these markets. Furthermore, Cboe is hoping to launch a bitcoin-based exchange-traded-fund (ETF) and the US Securities Exchange Commission will decide on the fate of this new product on August 10.

While Spot Prices Decline Bitcoin-Based Futures Contracts Have Been Steadily Increasing

Cryptocurrency spot prices have been in a slump over the past two quarters of 2018 but rumor on the street is institutional interest in cryptocurrency custody and regulated investment vehicles is picking up speed. Even though market sentiment has been bearish, futures contracts sold by Cboe and CME Group have increased significantly during the second quarter of 2018. Right now, on July 12, there have been 1199 contracts filled so far and products for the month of August are adding up today as well. Cboe has been selling between 2500-18,000 bitcoin futures contracts per day.

Will this certainly help bitcoin price spike in upcoming days?

It will be very interesting to see what their positions are, because I have a feeling that most of these investors have some kind of an idea what might happen with the SEC's decision on the ETF's.

I am not a big supporter of these Bitcoin Futures, because I think it creates incentives to manipulate the Bitcoin price. These people have a lot of fiat to be in a position to manipulate the price on several exchanges.  >:(

The futures markets shouldn't *yet* be taken seriously. People think they are important and manipulative because the price went down after CME went live with its markets. For some odd reason people don't believe that this market can move without it being manipulated or influenced by external elements. The mainstream media made the futures markets look like a monster, and they add fuel to the fire by pointing out that the tulip bulb mania ended when futures were introduced.

Let's look at the volumes of the futures markets of yesterday.

CBOE; 1117 contracts worth 1117BTC = $7,000,000
CME; 1740 contracts worth 8700BTC = $54,000,000

Bitcoin's 24H volume $3,500,000,000

These future markets aren't even enough to tickle Ethereum.

That's what the mainstream media does. This also happened when a 'research paper' by John Griffin about market manipulation was published. There were multiple articles reporting that bitcoin's price went down by 5% when the paper was published. Considering that bitcoin is known to have 5% variance, the connection made was stupid.

The volume is getting bigger over time, it's something to consider when the contract set especially towards the end of the contract.
Look at the article, mentioned that CME has 6739 contracts but if you check the site₁, 6180 contracts have sold worth $192,846,900. And the record for CBOE recorded on April 25th was 18,000+ contracts traded for May and it's around 2634 contracts sold for August and September.
Nevertheless, the volume indicates the interest of bitcoin market and big whales can slightly manipulate the market by buying and selling bitcoin according to the contract's deadline which occasionally intrigues the market to panic sell. Traders may just buy 100 or 200 contracts but they also can buy 1000-2000 bitcoin at the current rate, waiting for the price increase and dump it by the end of the day.

That's assuming the deadline actually matters, and I'm not really convinced of that. We definitely need more history to prove that.

The main point is that when wealthy players have enough resources to manipulate the spot market, why would they use an extremely regulated platform as CBOE to do that? BitMex has way more liquidity, is far less restrictive, let's you settle shorts or longs based on cash value but with Bitcoin, and you can withdraw your funds in Bitcoin at anytime without anyone asking you all sorts of questions. For that reason I strongly believe that if there is one platform highly correlated with manipulation, then it's BitMex.

BitMex's current volume is $1.8 billion for the last 24 hours, but they have had days with $4-5 billion in 24h volumes.

Current situation is that traders here are afraid of CBOE & CME's manipulation, but at the same time traders using CBOE & CME are afraid of Bitcoin's manipulation.

They all know it's going to be a no.

They also all know that the starry-eyed nincompoops who populate this market will drive it up in anticipation. Then they'll all run for the exit in floods of tears when the no comes through.

Yet another newbie asshole posting stuff from bitcoin dot com, the camped domain of Roger Ver.

Are you stupid, or you support his Bitcoin takeover attempt?

What the fuck, seriously.

Even if the SEC approves this ETF next month in the best case scenario, it won't be open for business until somewhere in Q1 of 2019. We'll either see another bull run take place directly, or the market will conservatively move up step by step and boom in 2019. Don't think institutions like to have expensive coins to declare when we shift from 2018 to 2019 and for that reason wouldn't really expect much this year. Statistically the switch from December to January has always been correlated with a steep decline in price, don't think it will be different this time.

I agree that the ETF will take time to come to the market, even if it gets approval now. But what the approval will do is result in a change in sentiment. And that definitely counts for something, especially in the crypto world. I definitely don't expect a big jump, but you never know what turns on the crypto market.

Exactly, BitMex volume seems so big and susceptible to manipulation in order to influence the market.
Traders and whales are different in my perspective, yes both do trade but different in number of capital to gain momentum.
Traders such as villagers and whales act as mafia in the market :D. They can invest in every aspect, exchanges, CBOE, CME, even altcoins to drive the wheels and then cash out, extract profit as much as they can. They just need a sign in their trading group to do so.

Hope they will start a BTC ETF, many people are interested in it, and I'll put my 401k in it, lol.