CME Group offers Bitcoin Futures trading. What does it mean for cryptomarket?
Many times Bitcoin has been described as a “bubble”, “fraud” or even “money launderer’s best friend”. This is just a small part of its sobriquets, but this is not important — Bitcoin continues to grow. Every week its price rises, and cryptocurrency becomes more popular. Just in April its price was a little over $1300. In early November it rose up more than $7400, then fell below $6000 (right before the so-called “fork”) and then rose again. For now its rate is about $11 500.
This year is crucial for cryptocurrency: some governments accepted bitcoin, and now institutional investors did the same. One of the largest derivatives exchanges in the world, CME Group, announced its plans to launch bitcoin features before the end of this year. Company representatives has reported that CME’s bitcoin features will be based on so-called “Bitcoin Reference Rate”. It could be explained as “a once-a-day reference rate” based on the US-dollar price of the coins. Besides CME Group its own permission to launch Bitcoin futures gave the CFC. Cantors Exchange now has a possibility to offer its binary options for Bitcoin to investors from all over the world.
Moreover, even NASDAQ is going to launch Bitcoin-futures at the end of 2018. Now it has a preliminary status of discussion. But will it affect the Bitcoin rates? Some experts now have a doubts that Bitcoin has a limits in it grow. Are they right?
May be. Now the whole Bitcoin market is very hot and it continues to warm up. CME Group и Cantor are the main drivers of Bitcoin rates in a short and middle term. This cryptocurrency was selected not only because it is most promising (depends to trades volume and capitalization). No, bitcoin is much more now.
We could say that traditional financial institutions approved Blockchain as the object of investments and money saving instrument. But now it is not a means of payment. For example, the golden bar is not the means of payment. But now no one makes the payments with golden bars. So this just an instrument for savings and generating wealth.
We can’t make some strong and accurate forecasts about Bitcoin future. Cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile market which can be affected by negative news or just a very rapid growth.
For example, information about NASDAQ and bitcoin appeared at Wednesday, 29th of November. Comarkets said that it successfully overcame such psychological barrier as $10000. In many cases after such a big growth comes the “period of stabilization”. Now the Bitcoin rate is more than $11500 for one coin. Obviously, the solution of Nasdaq made its own influents to the Bitcoin rates. Then we saw some correction but now Bitcoin rates is about $11 000. More closer will be the date of futures trading the more Bitcoin will grow. May by we’ll see the $13 000 — $14 00 before this date but the grow potential is pretty good.
What about BCH? This is pretty good questions but only few peoples for all over the word are now truth. Its rate is pretty stable. It can be changed by some CME Groupю. But probably Bitcoin rate appreciation will exert pressure to all types of altcoins.
Will these speculations and real actions of market participants affect the volume trading in cryptocurrency? Probably, yes.
But now it is rather difficult to make the forecasts. Why? Because now there are too many factors which could affect the Bitcoin rates. Christmas, New Year vacations is the time when most of brokers records the fee earned and start to wait. So, it will be possible to make the reasonably accurate picture only at January-February of 2018. And then we’ll have the Chinese New Year when the Chinese won’t work so the business stops. Now token holders from China have a strong impact on crypto currencies rates.
What does it mean? Very probably that the real influence of bitcoin futures will be clear when the holidays will end. But if these securities will have a success, than more and more investors and exchanges will be interested in it. Anyway, now most of the investors are not ready to invest a lot in Bitcoin and its futures. This situation would change only after legislation base shift in many countries and further grow of Bitcoin rate. It will happen if happen only six or more month later.
Anyway, if NASDAQ will launch Bitcoin futures, it will clear the tracks for other cryptoprojects. Especially for those which tokens are asset-backed. For example, tokens of Hamster Marketplace LLP are the functional part of digital shopping platform with unique one-of-a-kind devices.
