NASDAQ plans to let investors bet on Bitcoin's rise and fall

The exchange will offer futures contracts in 2018
by Ben Popper Nov 29, 2017, 12:49pm EST

Bitcoin is back in the news as its price continues a meteoric rise, with the cost of a single coin breaking $10,000 yesterday. Today, it was reported by several major publications that NASDAQ, the second largest stock exchange in the world, plans to launch futures contracts for Bitcoin next year. That would allow investors to bet on the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency, profiting if they are correct about the direction of its future price.

NASDAQ is hardly the first player from the traditional finance world to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon. At the start of this month, Chicago’s CME Group said it would begin providing futures contracts on bitcoin as well. As The Verge reported this morning, while many well-known bankers and investors continue to deride Bitcoin as a bubble or a Ponzi scheme, almost every major financial institution has been exploring how they might interact with Bitcoin and its underlying structure, the blockchain.

The introduction of various financial products around Bitcoin will amplify the amount of risk investors can take. Cantor Fitzgerald, a large broker which owns an exchange, announced today that it plans to launch Bitcoin derivatives in the first half of 2018. Futures and derivatives allow investors to place bets on bitcoin without owning any of the actual currency, amplifying the amount of financial leverage on the underlying asset. It was an explosion of derivatives pegged to real estate assets like mortgages that underpinned the financial collapse of 2008.

Bitcoin’s rise in price since the start of 2016.
As Bitcoin continues to mint new millionaires, real-world applications for the currency and the underlying technology have so far remained niche. There are countless startups attempting to use bitcoin, blockchains, and other cryptocurrencies. Fueling a lot of this exuberance has been initial coin offerings, where investors can buy virtual tokens in lieu of more traditional equity. This year alone, ICOs have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, passing traditional venture capital as a source of funds.

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https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16715296/nasdaq-bitcoin-futures-long-short

now guy i really think that bitcoin and other currencies are going to explode wen this happens.. its going to let in the billions of dollars that are currently just itching to get into BTC... i am definatlly buying more BTC!! this is going to let all them wallstreet guys in and it is goin to shoot the price up since bitcoin is soo scarse.. lets hope that it does!!!