Bitcoin Forum

The end of the year marked the arrival of bitcoin futures contracts. Since CME Group and the CBOE announced their bitcoin futures contracts launch - the world awaits for the new wave of Bitcoin adoption.

In this article you can find the most important information about upcoming bitcoin futures.

1. CBOE Futures

Sales date: December 10, 2017

Contract unit: The Cboe Bitcoin Futures Contract will use the ticker XBT and will equal one bitcoin.

Trading hours: Cboe’s XBT contract will trade on CFE, with regular trading hours of 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Eastern time on Mondays and 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m Tuesday through Friday. Extended hours will be 6 p.m. Sunday to 9:30 a.m. Monday, and 4:30 p.m. Monday through to 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Margin rate and clearing: Cboe’s contract will clear through the Options Clearing Corporation and a 30% margin rate will apply.

Contract expirations: Cboe said it may list up to four weekly contracts, three near-term serial months, and three months on the March quarterly cycle.
Price limits and trading halts: Cboe will halt trading in its contract for 2 minutes if the best bid in the XBT futures contract closest to expiration is 10 percent or more above or below the daily settlement price of that contract on the prior business day.

2. CME Futures
Sales date: December 17, 2017...

Read more: https://hype.codes/bitcoin-futures-are-coming

Well the repercussions are clearly shown in terms of the price of bitcoin. Too much hype, which is causing literally everyone to call bitcoin to be a bubble, just like the real estate bubble back in the day. Stupid people want to pump the price so badly, gain the attention and boom ruin the whole thing after some time. Don't want stock market people to come play with bitcoin now, seriously. The crypto world is much better without the likes of them. But fucking no one can do anything 'bout it.  :'( :(

I fully agree with you. So you suggest that after bitcoin futures launch - bitcoin will blow? To be honest, I think it's too early for bitcoin to deal with stock market and I'm concerned that big bitcoin blow after futures start could really hit the system.

I just read this Coindesk article (link: https://www.coindesk.com/threat-bitcoin-futures/) about futures, and it says:

But here’s the thing: the money will not be pouring into the bitcoin market. It will be buying synthetic derivatives that don’t directly impact bitcoin at all.

For every $100 million (or whatever) that supermegahedgefundX puts into bitcoin futures, no extra money goes into bitcoin itself. These futures do not require ownership of actual bitcoins, not even on contract maturity.


---> so, if futures are just basically bets on the Bitcoin price movements and totally outside the Bitcoin blockchain, why would they have any effect on the price? Why would Bitcoin price go up or down because of futures exists? Anyone could make any bets of the price movements already right now as it is. Ofc you can argue to some extent that people who bet the price to go up might go and buy Bitcoin their selves to help boost it. But there are so many whales who have bought bitcoins at 1$ or 10$ years ago who really control such things. If some Wall Street fat cat goes now to the market when the price is 15.000 there's a limit how much he can buy it without the risk growing way too high.

This whole thing feels like inside out. There have been long time some ETFs you can buy, where the fund actually owns bitcoins. So, each time someone buys the asset the fund goes and buys Bitcoins. This is something that effects the price, yet people are talking about only these futures.

Could someone explain this, who knows the futures market better  ???

Bitcoin may not blow immediately, there's a huge support for it right now. It may not go down for several months too, for I have seen that if stock market people want to invest something, they invest big and the time they take it usually for like 3-6 months, and when they come to know that normal public is very keen on buying bitcoin, they will dump it so so badly that people lose confidence not only on their investment, they become disappointed and some even commit suicide. Depressions are very much common now a days, only SEC can do something and set some sort of limit for example. God knows.

Perhaps, I will agree with you. But, when rates make the whales of the market, it matters to small investors. They start to buy or sell in a panic. After all, I think that whales are smarter. So there will be a price manipulation.

The appearance on the Chicago exchange futures contracts is an attempt to Rob some whales other whales. I don't believe it. I don't even know how to trade bitcoins in this way. It seems to me that major transactions will be conducted in the same way as now. Fortunately today, the Chicago stock exchange is not a monopoly.

Don't you think that speculators could raise hype about it and hence manipulate the price?

The future market would allows Whale to easily go long or short.
In other words, easier for them to manipulate the market?  We shall see how it goes.

Yes. There is a vast chance of being affected by the upcoming bitcoin. We know that, if the supply of the bitcoin increases, then its price will fall.

I posted this as a topic so sorry if against rules for double post. Feel free remove. Just trying help.



We need to spread the word and F Wall st.

Futures are going to start trading on it Sunday night. These futures are cash settled. This means they are not connected to BTC in anyway. Like 0.0000%. They are just trading fiat aka making fiat bets on BTC's actual price. So they have endless fiat dollars to short their futures down to $0.

But here's there beauty. If tons of us stay HODL and completely ignore the futures price, futures price can be down 50% and BTC on say coinbase can be plus 20%. This would be all over the evening news and expose Wall St. for the sham it is.

Spread the word.

Example: Someone makes a billion $ bet BTC will be $5,000 Dec 31st. They are trying to effectively short BTC. If BTC on coinbase/exhanges is $10,000 on Dec 31st. This person who made the bet just has to pay the difference between $5,000 (their bet) and BTC physical price of $10,000. So they owe $5K in fiat.

It's a way to manipulate a currency/asset etc, because people think the futures is an actual price or indicator. It is neither, it is a bet is all.If everyone stayed HODL, Wall. St. would get destroyed.

Best explanation I've heard today, thank you

Well, here is a problem though. Who do you think has been gobbling-up all the bitcoins since mid-November? Certainly not us.

I kinda think this may be the case as well. Having Futures as an option for many of these whales may be too tempting to short Bitcoin and drive the price down.

Just another reason to diversify your portfolio!

This is how I think futures affects the price.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Say in November bitcoin is $8k, and Bob bets that in 1 month time that the price will be $10k.  John agrees to the futures and to sell bitcoin at $10k to Bob in Dec.

In December, the bitcoin price is actually $15k.  Now Bob gets a $5k discount, and John loses $5k - plus a whole bunch of bitcoin is sold at $10k when the price is $15k.

Does the whole market react and then tank because a whole amount of bitcoin was sold at $10k??

I thought it was going to require physical delivery, but it seems it's a cash settlement system, If the market becomes large enough, it means that the banks can manipulate the price, and increase their holding in Bitcoin at the expense of the speculators. This will be bad for the reputation of Bitcoin.

That would be correct if it required physicl delivery, but this is a cash settlement system, so no Bitcoins are involved.

If the futures price is $5k and the spot price is $10k, I will sell my Bitcoins in the spot market and buy in the futures market. When the trades are settled, I will buy again in the spot market, netting a neat profit. Millions of others will do this. This is one reason why your strategy won't work.

thank-you for correcting me.  If that's the case, then some people are going to make and lose US$.  How does that affect the bitcoin price?  I don't get it.  To me they are two different universes.  It's like if we had a telescope to see the activities of people in another planet, we could bet on futures on their activities and make/lose money - but that doesn't affect their ecosystem.

How would US$ based futures affect bitcoin?   I don't get it.

It is already affecting the markets... The upcoming futures market set bitcoin on a nice bull rally for the last week or so. What we dont know yet is what is going to happen once those futures go online. From then on its anyones guess which trend the charts will follow. We can only hope its not a huge correction back to 4 digits.

It will probably play out similar to gold futures which are ATM the defacto price discovery mechanism for gold. Other precious metals work the same way too, but gold is the most prominent. I can see the BTC futures market baloon to 40x-100x bitcoin market cap with big players trying to take money from each other.

Since the futures will be much more liquid than the actual bitcoin market and much larger, since they are derivatives, the futures will become the go-to price check.

How does this affect the price of bitcoin?  What you're saying seems to imply that the US$ will be affected not bitcoin.  I suppose if you own a lot of bitcoin and you flooded the market just to buy the futures contract, that would tank the price?

Bitcoin futures. This only indicates a more serious approach to the crypto currency. When earlier every second laughed at this, today they are unintelligible.

Government regulator: We're going 'to make sure' new bitcoin futures are not manipulated.

Federal oversight of bitcoin futures aims to preserve the integrity of the contracts, a CFTC official tells CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/06/government-to-make-sure-new-bitcoin-futures-are-not-manipulated.html

CFTC Statement on Self-Certification of Bitcoin Products by CME, CFE and Cantor Exchange
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7654-17

This is true. But heres the rub. When you go to make that arbitrage play, where are your coins to sell? You can't short BTC physical. So you can't make that arbitrage play. Now if you have the coins on hand already then yes......And if that's the case, Wall St. needs to buy pretty much every physical coin there ever was made to prepare for these arbitrage plays and or hedging.

I'm not pretending to know the outcome as it will sure be a wild west for the 1st month. But if say 1/2 the coins are HODL, gonna be tough for Wall St to hedge $200B futures market with actual coins/physical.

Yes, Futures affect the market. American Exchanges can do manipulations with bitcoin price because futures will be controlled by the exchange. The important fact, futures will be buying/selling for dollars, that means we can lose a "sense" of cryptocurrency because bringing back to dollars.

F $US.  Shame on anyone who sells out bitcoin for something worthless.

all that will necessarily impact the market, create an additional demand

Every time a crypto is listed on a new market, it spikes given the increase in liquidity that's entering that market, so the opening of Bitcoin futures is insane in the sense of the amount of money that will start flowing into Bitcoin.

So if this is True, you guys should be buying as much as you can right now lol.  you guys are scared.  Winklevoss also confirmed my prediction to a 100 million dollar bitcoin.  Keep speculating and before the whales come in you will miss out.

the hype of the news seems to be nearly over now and price finally stopped rising after a very long rally. and that is all the effect you are going to get for the "pre-news date" and that was already big enough.

for the actual date when the markets start. the result will depend on how much manipulation is going into those market and also how effective the manipulation is. i say it won't be that effective.

Is there a chance that the the bitcoin futures price will be used a standard price for bitcoin?

In this next two weeks we will see what influence it has

Wow, so you really think the CME and CBOE involvement is bad?!

I think it will only be good for Bitcoin. And let me explain to you how this will work, because I think you may be misinformed.

Futures transactions will happen via the futures market the CME and CBOE use. The buy and sell transactions are cleared through their network. These transactions will not hit the blockchain, therefore the daily volatility of futures contracts won't directly impact the price of Bitcoin.

What will influence the Bitcoin price is these investment firms (or individual investors) having to buy and hold Bitcoin as reserves to back some of the futures transactions. If you're selling a covered put (for example) you need to own Bitcoin to cover the sale. Instead of individual investors buying Bitcoin and holding it with these investment firms, the investment firms will likely buy Bitcoin to hold as reserves for the transactions.

This futures business should create more buy and hold investors.

This is pretty sound logic to begin with.   If 1/2 the coins are HODL though, HODL until what price?  When Wall St. wants to play, they are HAPPY to pay for it.   So I can we can go to the moon before downward mainstreamm manipulation starts full scale.  Just remember to cash out and buy back...

They will affect the market, but we don't know the direction of this effect. There are several differet scenarios I read from medium and twitter. I hope the best one happens for bitcoin.

Yes the bitcoin will affect the future market and the whole system as well. Accepting bitcoin in our industry will brings innovation for everyone;
wherein the bitcoin will establish a well organize and systematic management in future which will brings lots of opportunities for everyone.

why are futures more liquid ???
Bitcoin = a very liquid asset, in any real volume.
It's not gold or coffee!

The market will definitely be affected but hopefully in a good way. We all know that these wall street whales don't care about bitcoins or anything else as long as they are filling their pockets with more money. I'm only optimistic about CBOE as they have Andreas as an advisor.

The CME and CBOE bitcoin fixture will definitely create a big inpact in bitcoin price. This is why I give kudos to Tim Draper, the Forbes etc becausw their prediction about bitcoin bullish is already coming true.

The CBOE and CME bitcoin contract futures has already created a massive demand of bitcoin which literally generate the transaction congestion we're experiencing lately and I hope something will done to fix though.

What you are even talking about,increasing the supply of bitcoin. ::)
The news of a future derivative market drove the price to these levels without a doubt,i was expecting a correction for a very long time and it is still not happening in the price and with the derivatives market being launched in December,i would like to see what the price would be by January and will there be much volatility in the price and so on,i do expect a correct once everything is launched and when there is nothing more to speculate. ;D

Not correct cause its cash settled.

This is my #1 fear and will be tail wagging the dog.

I fear the news is going to only quote futures price and people will use this price only and fearful and sell actual BTC. Hence tail wagging dog.

Now if retailers know to only check GDAX/Coinbase/Gemini, etc we are good to go and Wall  St. firms will blow up pretty fast since their endless amounts of fiat don't move physical BTC as "we" are all privy to their game.


BTC and the futures are connected in no way. 1 is a paper bet with endless fiat. 1 is actual BTC trading.

Stay strong and spread the word.

People who hate the stock market are getting into the encrypted currency. They don't understand block chain technology at all, so that they come to the market only to make the encrypted market unhealthy. Today's dramatic fluctuations are also seen, which is directly related to futures entering bitcoin.

Most likely it will be a bear affecting for a whole crypto market because a huge players will finally have a way to take all those crypto enthusiasts' money! Did yall really think that everybody could become mi/bilionaire and take this OG economic system down which was created through many wars and a blood in our history? I dont think so. Be ready for a huge dumping and better stay safe at these dark times.

As a contrarian, the obvious answer is that this will cause massive manipulation of btc price resulting in erratic swings up/down but I will go against popular judgement and say it will cause continued upward trend .... but these thieves may stay true to form and destroy btc

It would affect the bitcoin market positively in the short term and negatively in future as it may crash just as it happened in tulips.But what we could see now is that most of the investors are excited about price hike.Some term it that crash could happen like tulips while some others say that there would be no negative effect sincpetrolfuruoil futures is there and it has not affected the oil prices.

It will definitely have an impact, as investors who are skeptical about the crypto-exchanges will start investing in Bitcoin through CME and CBOE. But still, I think that an ETF based on Bitcoin will be having much more impact. And from what I have heard, some of the mainstream traders are considering listing Bitcoin ETFs in NASDAQ in 2018.

With the amount of institutional money that's going to have exposure via the CME and CBOE there's no way it won't have an effect.  The exact magnitude remains to be seen, but it will absolutely affect the market.

definately we can see its effect on marhet.its clearly predictable :)

What is XBT ? sorry feel like I'm recovering from stroke ...  ???

XBT means a currency not officially recognized by any country
X currencies get that abbreviation.
BTC is well the name we use

Settled against Gemini.

From CBOE website: http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures?utm_campaign=bitcoin-futures&utm_medium=vanity-url&utm_source=na (http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures?utm_campaign=bitcoin-futures&utm_medium=vanity-url&utm_source=na)

"XBT futures are cash-settled contracts based on the Gemini's auction price for bitcoin, denominated in U.S. dollars."

This is likely responsible for recent GBTC correction. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4130800-bitcoin-investment-trust-set-big-correction (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4130800-bitcoin-investment-trust-set-big-correction)

The most important aspect of these futures products is that large enterprises, PayPal/Venmo for example, can add Bitcoin products without currency risk. This enables massive onramps for adoption.

If manipulation of bitcoin price really happening, it will make people dont believe to bitcoin anymore i think.
They think will loss if someone or company have power to control or manipulate the price.

I'm curious to see how bitcoin will react

Bitcoin may not explode soon, there is great support for the moment Maybe it will not go down for a few months, as you have seen if the stock market wants to invest something, they invest heavily in the next 3-6 months, when they find out that people are very interested to buy bitcoin, they will throw it away so that people lose confidence in their investment, they become disappointed and even Depression is very common now, only the SEC can do something and set some kind of limitations for example..only God knows.

As we "all know", market makers get clued from derivatives about what and where to price. Except that BTC has so little market making that I cannot see an immediate effect

Their site is much slower than I would expect. They probably have some problems with high amount of traffic.

Is this a good thing for the Bitcoin ? Does that also mean more manipulation by the banks to have bitcoin futures?

Nobody really know. I watch a lot of smart guys on youtube but all of them have different opinions...


Looks like it is.
https://twitter.com/CBOE/status/940001581482815498

But I hope CME will be prepared for it much better based on CBOE experience.

I am adopting a wait and see approach to this, it seems counter intuitive that the mainstream markets are essentially playing with bitcoin in this way. They are not involved directly from what I can see, only creating naked contracts which betting on price movement. I worry if Bitcoin has say $200 Billion of market cap and there ends up being $800 Billion of these contracts.

so there will be more price manipulation , isn't not decentralized anymore ....

It seems it has started the soaring

$16,029 according to coinmarketcap

Edit: $16,295

we can check the delayed quotes in https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/xbtf8

so far is trending up...

I see how you could make that assumption. However the way I see it  the future markets (CBOE, CME ) are not at all involved in the governance of Bitcoin.

Simply stated, this is all just people outside the crypto world betting if the price goes up or down - basically they are derivatives.

They may manipulate price trends since they have vast amounts of cash to back it up. But unless they actually hold bitcoin and sell it it still is outside of the Bitcoin market.

This is all new and we are learning as we go. Exiting times  ;)

Next year , Japan would open futures too.

There would be more and more Futures exchanges show up, I believe.

guys, pls explain about futures, I don't understand anything  ??? ::)

if you look at the charts and how the price has been changing and forget all about futures, CME, CBOE, NASDAQ,... you will find it interesting that this has been very similar to all the previous movements!

a big rise followed by a big drop of less than 30% which lasts a couple of days, then another leg up back to base and rise from there!

Yes, it's good. More awareness = more adoption = more demmand = higher value for us. I think it helps legitimize bitcoin especially with those people who just ignorantly think it's a scam or a bubble. It's already pushed the value up around 2k in a day so it can't be bad. I don't think it will continue to rise for much longer though but I hope to be proved wrong.

Bitcoin is keep increasing!!! Its really awesome its nearly reach 15000$ and in the future bitcoin will use officially as real money i hope that because its fun and exciting

Whatever effect futures trading will have on Bitcoin price, if at all, will probably only be evident mich farther into next year when the first contracts are settled. I know the expectations are for major shorting to take place but then why would these big funds and merchants want to let us in on what they'll do anyway?

We already know that these so far launched do not involve actual Bitcoin trading, so there's no worry there. Manipulation may still be possible,but this would only reveal who the whales have been all the while across the major exchanges with significant KYC already completed and ongoing.

If anything, this launch has already served to boost Bitcoin if not stabilise it. Expect next week's CME launch to propel that even higher.

Major parameters of futures are here: https://hype.codes/bitcoin-futures-are-coming

You're correct. This is year bitcoin price movement seems to be the same as last price movement before we reaches the $2100 predicted by the saxo bank. But the Cboe,cme,russia stock and Nasdaq bitcoin futures also help the price movement.

Definitely, investors will definitely purchase or sell theirs as quick as possible. But for sure bitcoin won't burst too quick, that's for sure.

There is obviously an example of CBOE futures launch on 10 December, when Bitcoin made one of the largest growth in % in 5 minutes time, I think the same will happen upon CME launch. I have a quick video proving my point, would be glad to hear your feedback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsR9N-TDBWM

Personally speaking, I am not afraid of any effect Bitcoin Futures may have on Bitcoin because this is quite a very different arena compared the traditional investment vehicles which also have their own futures. Time will tell how this whole thing can really impact Bitcoin but for now it seems to be non-factor at all. In fact, this can be helping Bitcoin because this is partly recognizing Bitcoin as a legal currency or asset.

According to coindesk, there is a possibility that investors from the institution have bought Bitcoin to get their own gains and make use of the futures market.

It's a cash settled market. No bitcoins are actually traded. It allows people to trade on the volatility of the bitcoin price, which is essentially gambling. I'm more interested in seeing a bitcoin ETF which is essentially a stock price which will closely track the bitcoin price allowing people exposure to the market with registered investments.

This is not a surprising thing because the market’s trend has been increasing lately. That is why it is the right time to invest at Bitcoins now.