Bitcoin Futures On CME Opening At Over $20k
The long awaited Bitcoin futures trading by CME opened hours ago, with a price of over $20k per bitcoin. There are contracts expiring in February, March and June and the price is stable around the $20,000 mark for all of them.
It's interesting to note that, contrarily to what happened during the first futures opening, a week ago, the operator's site didn't crash and the price went even lower than the current index, at some point, until $18,345, but it recovered fast.
At the moment of writing, Bitcoin is not showing any consistent signs of growing, trading flat for $19,085 on Coinmarketcap, but it's still early in the week.
The slowdown of the market may be a sign of health: both futures operators have a clause at which they are closing trading if there is more than 7% increase in price day to day (which was something very normal for Bitcoin). So smaller, but more consistent moves may be expected from institutional investors, which don't want to see big spikes.
Although, relatively modest, I think this is a good sign, especially since alts seem to be a bit disconnected, trading in different directions. STEEM and SBD, for instance, are on a consistent bull run.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
sorry for my off-topic comment but you said there was a change like 67% sbd and 33% steem but i am still getting 50/50 when i check payouts?
In the UI, you see 50/50, but when you cash out, you get more SBD than STEEM (67/33)
This is definitely a good sign. We cant have bull runs all the time.
Nice post. I have 1 question on the same. Which exchange do the use for underlining value of bitcoin. At the time of expiry settlement which spot/cash exchange price do they use.
There's a list of a few exchanges, but I do not know exact details.
How do you read volume on these things? Does that mean that only one contract for Feb 2018 was bought? Since each of these contracts represents 5 bitcoin that puts the total volume at 3250 BTC, which is less than .5% of all BTC traded today according to CoinMarketCap. Not exactly the waves of Wall Street Money we were promised.
I don't know who promised you a wave of Wall Street Money, but this volume is certainly reflecting a normal, conservative approach towards a new financial instrument. I would be worried if the volume of futures will be higher, to be honest...
I think a lot of traders are taking a watch and see approach to bitcoin futures. They just want to know how well they act in the first month. I believe that the liquidity will pick up more in the coming months.
That's the price, but what are contracts selling for?
They are futures contracts, basically bets for the future price of Bitcoin. I think the price that you see, it's the price in the "bet".
It is the price whoever is closing the deal will have to pay whenever the contract expires. Imagine you are a company and wants to have a nice amount of bitcoin at a fixed price for next month. You bet on a price and expect that price will be lower than the real one, when you have to buy the contract. Future price reflect the sentiment of the market in the future, if today trading price for January future contract is $20.000 it means traders expect Bitcoin will reach that price by January.
It's still monday, we will have to wait till at least Thursday if there is a new stable price.
Almost ideal news I guess, I'm going to have some champagne ready in case of steem going to the moon :)
As everything, Bitcoin price will eventually settle but settle at such a high price nothing can drop it down below 20k soon...
Awesome write up man, will be following your blog account as well! Looking forward to your other post. #StayGreen