On 18th of December, TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., a well-known investing and trading platform, will enable its brokerage clients to trade bitcoin futures.
CBOE Global Markets Inc. was the first futures-trading market to consider the priority of Bitcoin. Last week, it started offering Bitcoin futures contracts to the customers. That has ultimately resulted into the crash down of its website as numerous orders could not been held.
By that time, Bitcoin has already been trading on the positive momentum, but after the launch of its futures, the price surges dramatically alike to its buying interest. At the time of writing, Bitcoin hits the benchmark of $20,000, according to CoinMarketCap.
TD Ameritrade took a week break to observe the market reaction before join BTC futures trading and now is ready to provide its customer with the access to the contracts offered by CBOE. However, on the contrary to CBOE, it requires minimum $25,000 on account balance as collateral to performance. CBOE users are allowed to trade within possession of half mentioned sum.
To keep up in pace, CME Group, another large derivatives marketplace, has announced the onset of Bitcoin futures trading on 17th of December. Nevertheless, the TD Ameritrade will not immediate respond to the introduction. During unsettled period, the access to CME Group Bitcoin futures will be banned for TD Ameritrade brokers.
Managing director for futures trading at TD Ameritrade, JB Mackenzie described this decision on the following way:
“Right now we are taking the same approach we did with the CBOE product, to wait and see how it goes. We want to watch that market open and become an orderly marketplace and see who the participants are in that marketplace. This is the same process we use with any new product. We want to see how the market reacts.”
It seems like TD Ameritrade is going to give Bitcoin another test of time to exhibit vulnerability before being swept away in crypto bandwagon. Unfortunately, its customers are destined to withstand the lesson in perseverance and exercise their stamina before join the moneymaking stream of Bitcoin trading.
In the meantime, altcoins gain popularity and persistently reach new highs. Recently Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple have strengthened the position on the crypto trading after Bloomberg adds them to its terminals. I think it will not take long until first Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple futures contract will be trading.
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