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December 04, 2017, 04:45:26 PM |
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The presence of futures contracts on bitcoin on traditional exchanges will in fact make bitcoin's position "legitimate" in the existing financial and legal system. Bitcoin, and later, perhaps, other crypto-currencies, will become one of the asset classes traded on global exchanges, taking the place among precious metals, energy resources, agricultural products, government bonds and many other commodities and securities for which futures contracts are concluded. The fact that there are financial guarantees for transactions with bitcoin derivatives is undoubtedly capable of increasing the investment attractiveness, and hence the demand for the underlying asset and its price. This means that the global demand for bitcoins and market liquidity will significantly increase. Given the limited resource and predictable emission of "digital gold", these factors should significantly increase the price and at the same time reduce its volatility. And this will make bitcoin even more attractive for long-term investments. But despite the opportunities for growth, this step opens wide scope for market manipulation and can not only raise, but also drop the price of bitcoin. For example, if large traders on the same CME open contracts for billions of dollars to lower bitcoin, then there will be panic at the crypto-exchange markets and traders will start massively discarding the bitcoins, and where open-ended trading - open "short" deals or "shorts". This will cause a completely uncontrollable collapse of the price - in fact, bitcoin does not have a "bottom" and its participation in the real economy is extremely insignificant.
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