Bitcoin has indeed come a long way and it is now a step closer to legitimization with the recent launch of a product that allows investors to take bets on the cryptocurrency’s price in the future. This new contract on the Chicago Board Options Exchange was just in time for bitcoin’s 10% jump which was responsible for igniting fresh speculations that it was just a bubble especially after the prior 40% climb in price. The new Chicago futures trading indicates great optimism on the side of traders that bitcoin will trade at even higher prices come January.
When the futures exchange debuted on Sunday, bitcoin futures exploded thus forcing the Chicago Board Options Exchange to halt operations for a little while so that the market would cool down. Still, bitcoin which is the underlying asset, in this case, had a price bump of about 26%. It began at $15,460 before midnight on Sunday (London time) then surged forward to reach a record high $18,700 after which it had a slight relapse to $17,800. The price volatility exhibited within such a short period of time was responsible for a number of bumps including the halting of trading activities twice.
CBOE also explained that website was being strained by the stupendous amount of traffic in a tweet that read:
“Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to https://t.co/jb3O722hoo may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable. All trading systems are operating normally.”
Bitcoin is becoming more mainstream and the launch of this contract is just the beginning of what is expected to be a very smooth ride into the next year and beyond. CBOE has since stabilized and the exchange currently lists three bitcoin features that will each expire in the first three months of 2018. The final settlement value of all the three contracts will then be determined by bitcoin’s price on exchange Gemini. As it stands, the introduction of bitcoin futures is already curving up an upward trend for bitcoin’s price and now with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) planning to launch bitcoin futures of its own on the 18th of December, we can expect the price of bitcoin to surpass the $20,000 mark very soon.
