The Windy City is The New Frontier of Crypto Trading
The Chicago Board Options Exchange has become the first institution in the world to offer Bitcoin futures trading. The exchange, which is one of the largest options marketplaces globally, saw over 800 contracts traded within the first 2 hours of XBT futures going live yesterday. Trade volumes could have been higher, but the CBOE website crashed due to heavy traffic.
Futures contracts are financial instruments which give traders the ability to speculate over whether prices will rise or fall, without fully exposing themselves to the market -(holding cryptocurrency in this case).
The price of a single Bitcoin against the Dollar quickly rose above $16,000, indicating that institutional money was pouring into the market. The price sat just below $17,000 at the time of writing our EU newsletter this morning, but has since dipped back below $16,500.
XBT futures are the latest evolution in the cryptocurrency market, and the CBOE will soon be followed by CME Group, who are set to launch their own Bitcoin futures for traders on December 17th. Both of the institutions are seeking to take advantage of the rising interest in cryptocurrencies, by offering institutional investors (banks, hedge funds and others) the chance to trade in a more regulated marketplace.
