The Race for Bitcoin Futures

Major stock exchanges are racing ahead to introduce bitcoin futures. It seems that not even the likes of Nasdaq, CME Group and CBOE are immune to the bitcoin FOMO epidemic.

A narrow lead was taken by the CME Group today, which officially announced that their bitcoin futures contract will launch on Monday the 18th of December.

As reported by Bloomberg, Nasdaq sources have also strongly indicated that they will be looking to introduce bitcoin futures as early as the second quarter of 2018.

But even though the CME Group is currently the race leader, Nasdaq plans to introduce extra features to put it a step ahead of the competition. Pricing information for the oldest cryptocurrency will be compiled with more data from VanEck. VanEck will supply Nasdaq with information from more than 50 sources, compared to CME’s four. Nasdaq futures contract is further planned to handle hard forks. This year Bitcoin was forked twice and resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG). A planned third fork, which caused much controversy, was cancelled shortly before the set date.

This level of interest shown by the major US stock exchanges has given the bitcoin market a big legitimacy boost in a relatively short time. Russia’s largest stock exchange, Moscow Exchange, has also been building an infrastructure for the trading of cryptocurrencies. In an interview for Bitcoin.com, Andrey Braginskiy, Managing Director of Communications said that to list and trade bitcoin futures “no regulation is needed but the regulator needs to be in comfort.” After holding meetings with Russia’s top financial regulators, president Vladimir Putin announced recently that Russia will regulate cryptocurrencies. The regulatory framework is to be finalized in July next year.

In the meantime, Bitcoin has gained more than 900% on year-to-date, with prices exceeding $11,500 per Bitcoin.