The general consensus throughout the Bitcoin community in anticipation of the launch of Bitcoin futures was one of uneasiness and uncertainty. Many individuals announced they were selling Bitcoin prior to Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Bitcoin futures trading launch today, and many technical and fundamental analysts alike expected a sizable drop in response to this Bitcoin milestone. While the introduction of Bitcoin into the largest derivatives market in the world is a milestone for the cryptocurrency, many speculators feared Wall Street had pumped Bitcoin price up to recent all time highs last week, in order to dump today while shorting CME’s Bitcoin
The general consensus throughout the Bitcoin community in anticipation of the launch of Bitcoin futures was one of uneasiness and uncertainty. Many individuals announced they were selling Bitcoin prior to Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Bitcoin futures trading launch today, and many technical and fundamental analysts alike expected a sizable drop in response to this Bitcoin milestone.
While the introduction of Bitcoin into the largest derivatives market in the world is a milestone for the cryptocurrency, many speculators feared Wall Street had pumped Bitcoin price up to recent all time highs last week, in order to dump today while shorting CME’s Bitcoin futures. However, Bitcoin has performed considerably well since trading opened at 6 pm Central Time, breaking through recent resistance at $15,000 and now trading at just under $16,000.
Bitstamp BTC/USD 12 hour chart
When the futures launched earlier today, Bitcoin was trading at $14,700. It is currently up over $1,000, and seems to be poised to continue to surge. However, the real test may come Monday morning, when establishment traders clock in to take on this new market. Regardless, Bitcoin is well outperforming popular predictions for price movements on the day of the futures launch.
This is not to say that Bitcoin’s performance today is proof that its futures market has little interest. Quite the contrary is true. the Chicago Board Options Exchange, an exchange holding group offering BTC futures contracts, experienced a website crash due to high traffic. Luckily, the downtime was only momentary, and CBOE saw huge demand, trading over 800 contracts in the first two hours. Each BTC contract is worth 5 Bitcoin, which means trading volume eclipsed $60,000,000 during that two hour interval.
Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to https://t.co/jb3O722hoo may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable. All trading systems are operating normally.
— Cboe (@CBOE) December 10, 2017
If the price Bitcoin continues to hold steady, the individuals electing to cash out in preparation for a dump may instead choose to buy back in at or above where they previously sold. With sentiments of an impending correction or dump being dissuaded, its plausible to suggest another major Bitcoin bull run is right around the corner. Regardless of the direction the price heads, its likely that major volatility is perhaps the only constant in this ever evolving market, at least for the near future.