On 10th of December, CBOE Global Markets launched the new bitcoin product on the market – bitcoin futures. CBOE became the first exchange to offer bitcoin futures, while CME launches them on 17th of December.
While many expected the price of Bitcoin to crash and for the futures to trade at a relatively low price, the opposite is now true, as Wall Street saw a great start of the bitcoin futures. Bitcoin contract futures started trading at US$15,000 and 890 contracts were traded in the first 15 minutes on Sunday evening, according to the CBOE itself. The number of contracts had grown to 3,200 by around noon on Monday.
However, as with most online exchanges right now, like Coinbase and Bittrex, CBOE also experienced a technical “halt” trading bitcoin futures, because of the high demand, which only strengthened the position of where bitcoin and its potential stand at. Both halts happened on Sunday, lasting for just several minutes. The Chicago-based exchange said there were not “interruptions” on Monday.
Both CME Group and Nasdaq are to launch bitcoin futures, with CME launching on December 17th, and Nasdaq in 2018.
According to the online Stuff:
“Monday’s bitcoin trade “is an excellent sign for the digital currency industry”, said Jay Blaskey, digital currency specialist at BitIRA, which helps people purchase bitcoin for retirement accounts.
“What is interesting from our perspective is the volume being transacted as shown on a number of websites, including CoinMarketCap.com. The 24-hour volume trading over the past week has remained remarkably consistent.”
Bitcoin is trading at all-time highs currently of $16,500, despite the corrections that it experiences during the past two weeks. Major online exchanges have experienced difficulties in serving its client base, due to heavy demand. During the greatest peaks of bitcoin’s price, people were unable to access their accounts and their money were “locked” for hours. However, with bitcoin futures’ successful launch and with the current hype about the application of blockchain, bitcoin’s price is expected to go up even more, as more and more companies and financial institutions going in “for the ride”.