Showing posts with label cme group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cme group. Show all posts

Bitcoin futures market has now fully launched - look at the first full hour of trading...


As of about an hour ago, the Bitcoin futures market has launched with the world's largest player in the field - CME Group.

As CME opened their futures market from their Chicago headquarters today at 3pm (EST) - the overwhelming numbers so far show institutional investors placing their bets that Bitcoin will go even higher!  So far, comfortably predicting a price around $21,000.

Charts from the first hour of CME's trading. 

Similar results were seen last week, when CBOE (a firm much smaller than CME Group) launched their Bitcoin futures as well.

What does this mean long term for Bitcoin? The honest answer is, nobody knows.  Expert opinions range from futures giving Bitcoin the legitimacy it needs to reach $100k, with others saying eventually Wall Street will turn on cryptocurrencies and flood the market with short sells when they believe the 'bubble' has reached it's peak level.
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Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk

Breaking: CME Group won't be first to offer Bitcoin Futures trading - CBOE announces Dec 10 launch!


The big buzz in the cryptocurrency market lately has revolved around what will happen when Wall Street dives in head first and begins offering Bitcoin futures trading.

Virtually all that buzz centered on the plans CME Group, the Chicago/New York firm with over $3 Billion in annual revenue.

But in a surprising move - a rival firm is beating them to the punch! CBOE announced today they'll be offing Bitcoin futures on December 10th.

CME will now be jumping in a week later, on December 18th.

CBOE is roughly 1/3 the size of CME Group, the world's largest player in futures. 

Today in a press release CBOE stated:

Cboe Futures Exchange, LLC (CFE) plans to launch trading in Cboe bitcoin futures at 5:00 p.m. Central Time on December 10 under the ticker symbol "XBT". This brings many benefits to traders, including transparency, efficient price discovery, deep liquidity and centralized clearing. XBTSM futures provides a centralized marketplace for participants to trade based on their view of bitcoin prices, gain exposure to bitcoin prices or hedge their existing bitcoin positions.

CBOE is encouraging their clients to either "trade based on their outlook" of Bitcoin's future, or "Hedge their Bitcoin risks".

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Author: Ross Davis
San Francisco News Desk

CME Ceo: Millions of dollars from Wall Street could hit the cryptocurrency market as soon as December!


Speaking today with CNBC, CME Group chairman and CEO Terry Duffy says they aim to be offering Bitcoin futures to their investors as soon as December!

He also spoke about how they will structure their investments and risk management.

"Listen, when someone says to me, 'the price is going to zero, what are you going to do?' I'm not going to let it go to zero, I'm going to implement something." he says.

CME's venture into the cryptocurrency space also brings about something new - shorting Bitcoin.  That is, betting it will decline in value.

On that topic, Duffy says "We have the longs, we have the shorts, we'll match them up at a price and that's the way our rules read today."

We all knew Wall Street was coming - they're now at the doorstep, and are about to come in.

Reactions are a mixture of warm welcomes and fears that wherever Wall Street goes, government regulators are right behind them. 

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Author: Justin Derbek
New York News Desk

Bitcoin hits all time high for it's 9th birthday today - here's why!


It's a big day for Bitcoin! 

Not only is this it's 9th birthday - it also set a new all time high record, briefly going over $6400 and hovering around $6350 at the time of this article's publishing.

The reason behind the rise in price is the announcement that CME Group said it would launch bitcoin futures before the end of 2017.

CME is an American financial market company operating the world's largest options and futures exchange, and signals yet another move from Wall Street into the cryptocurrency space.

The idea of futures may be new to some in the crypto scene, NerdWallet explains it like this:

An airline company may want to hedge its bets against an unexpected increase in jet fuel prices. Its traders will therefore seek to enter into a futures contract to lock in a purchase price closer to today’s prices for jet fuel. So they may buy a futures contract agreeing to buy 1 million gallons of JP-8 fuel, taking delivery 90 days in the future, at a price of 3 dollars per gallon.

 Someone else naturally wants to ensure they have a steady market for fuel. They also want to protect themselves against an unexpected decline in fuel prices, so they will gladly enter into either a futures contract.

 In this example, both parties are hedgers, rather than speculators. They are turning to the futures market as a way to manage their exposure to risk, rather than make money off of the deal directly.

 These contracts aren’t just bought and sold over jet fuel, but over almost any asset that’s commonly traded. 

Now, the asset will be Bitcoin.

Bitcoin also celebrated it's 9th birthday today, which is worth giving some deeper thought.  Often cryptocurrency is talked about as if it's some untested, brand new technology. It's not.

Just months younger than the first iPhone, and one year away from being a decade old, perhaps it's time for people to accept that it's here to stay. I can't think of any other piece of 9 year old tech i'd still call "new".

Today's news seems to be a sign of exactly that, as the mainstream moving into the crypto market continues.

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Author: Ross Davis
San Francisco News Desk