Bitcoin Rises After CME, CBOE Move Ahead on Listing Futures
Bitcoin Rises After CME, CBOE to Start Listing Futures
(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin rose after CME Group Inc. and Cboe Global Markets Inc. said they will offer futures contracts as soon as this month, capping a record-breaking week that made the digital currency the focus of investors from Wall Street to Main Street.
“This is going to bring large sums of money in this area,” said Naeem Aslam, a chief market analyst at TF Global Markets in London. “It sends the message that the product does have some regulation around it and it is trading on the same exchange where other reputable derivatives are.”
The world’s largest digital currency has surged about 30 percent this week, reaching a record high of $11,434 on Nov. 29. The gains came with volatile intraday price swings of as much as 20 percent as online exchanges struggled to handle the surging interest and as warnings of an asset bubble intensified. The currency has risen more than 11-fold this year.
“It will be interesting. I think it’s generally positive,” billionaire venture capitalist Mark Cuban said in an email. “What they charge is critical. Transaction costs are relatively high for bitcoin. If this pushes transaction costs lower it will be a benefit to the bitcoin market.”
The move forward on futures is a watershed for Wall Street professionals -- including institutional investors and high-speed traders -- who’ve been eager to bet on cryptocurrencies and their wild swings. But the new products will also spur federal regulation, with the contracts announced Friday subject to oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The exchanges promised to help the agency surveil the underlying bitcoin market.
Under a process called self-certification the exchanges assured the CFTC that the new products complied with the rules. While it doesn’t technically require CFTC approval, the regulator could have stayed their plans if they weren’t satisfied. Friday’s announcement allows them to go forward.
Bitcoin, created in 2009, excited early investors with its potential use as a global currency, free from bank fees and government control. Transactions take place person-to-person around the world -- anywhere there’s Internet access.
There are other ways the new futures could spur more vigorous oversight of the cryptocurrency. The contracts, for example, could make it easier to create an exchange-traded fund tied to bitcoin -- even after a previous attempt was knocked down.
To contact the reporters on this story: Camila Russo in New York at crusso15@bloomberg.net, Ben Bain in Washington at bbain2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Andrew Dunn
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