CME and CBOE Group has recently revealed the specifications of their Bitcoin future contracts which has further fuelled the prices of the cryptocurrency.
Breaking records after records, and that’s what Bitcoin prices have been doing last month! Having touched a record high of above $81000 in the past 48 hours, Bitcoin price creates a new benchmark at $8336, according to CoinMarketCap and is currently trading at $8103.42.
A lot of factors have contributed to the Bitcoin rally in the past month, one of the major factor that is causing a huge inflow of investor’s cash in Bitcoin is the launch of Bitcoin Futures contract by CME Group, next month.
The announcement made by CME Group about the Bitcoin Futures Contract back on October 31st, 2017 was backed by a big euphoria amongst investors which has catapulted the Bitcoin prices from $5000 to $8000, a remarkable 40% increase.
CME CEO Terry Duffy said:
“Given increasing client interest in the evolving cryptocurrency markets, we have decided to introduce a bitcoin futures contract. As the world’s largest regulated FX marketplace, CME Group is the natural home for this new vehicle that will provide investors with transparency, price discovery and risk transfer capabilities.”
Ever since then there has been no stopping to Bitcoin, however, owing to the cancellation of the SegWit2x hard fork, there was a significant volatility observed in its prices, but Bitcoin seems to have gulped down all the negatives and is back trading strongly above $8000.
One reason for the Bitcoin’s higher price movements in past 48 hours is the fact that a notification appeared on CME’s official website confirming the exact date of launch for Bitcoin futures contract to be December 10th, 2017 and the commencement of trading from December 11th, 2017.
The notification reads: “Effective Sunday[,] 10 December 2017 for trade date Monday[,] 11 December 2017, and pending all relevant regulatory review periods, please be advised that CME will launch Bitcoin Futures.”
However, the notification was soon removed within 24 hours as one of the representatives of CME Group said in a statement that the notification was due to “an error” on the website. CME CEO Terry Duffy has earlier confirmed that the company will launch Bitcoin Futures contract in the second week of December.
With CME releasing specification of futures contracts on its website, it looks like it major competitor – CBOE Group – doesn’t wish to stay behind and so it too has just released specifications for its Bitcoin futures contract in its blog post.
One thing is clear that with the ever-growing popularity of Bitcoin, many big financial institutions who were earlier quite skeptical about its future prospects, have now turned a party to it. In order to get used to its features before launch, CME group is currently allowing its customers to test Bitcoin futures today.
Moreover, towing the line for futures contracts, LedgerX platform – an issuer of derivatives regulated by the US, has recently announced for long-term Bitcoin option plans with its price pegged at $10,000. LedgerX is said to have traded over $16 million till now in Bitcoin futures since it opened trade back on October 20, 2017.
Also, a yet another progress pertaining to cryptocurrencies is that Lightning Labs has successfully tested for instant off-chain atomic swap of virtual digital currency between Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Known as the Lightning Network, it is an intermediate network between the two blockchains of Bitcoin and Litecoin which facilitates instant cross-blockchain payments. This is a solution on which developers have been long working for to allow for faster and cheaper payments across blockchains.
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