The bitcoin today lives its first full day of operations in a futures market, amid growing popularity that has raised the value of the cryptocurrency to levels never seen since its inception in 2009, and doubts about its reliability.
The future bitcoin contracts, which are traded at one, two or three months, began to be offered on Sunday at 17.00 local time (23.00 GMT) on the Chicago CBOE market at a price of $ 15,000, according to the platform. communicated, and they reached $ 19,330 during Monday.
After almost 16 hours of night operations that slowed down the digital platform, a score of firms had negotiated 3,001 contracts of the cryptocurrency in the middle of this first day, which has captured the attention of analysts.
“Our regulated market has experienced a smooth operational opening and markets arranged during the evening’s trading session, and we expect the growth of this new derivatives market,” said the platform’s chairman and CEO, Ed Tilly, who considered the launch a “success”.
The contracts with the most demand were those that expire in January and at the close of Wall Street (21.00 GMT) they changed hands at a price of 18.530 dollars, although the March futures had the highest intraday price of 19.330 dollars, according to data from CBOE
Investors considered that the volume of negotiations is being light on the debut, something that the operator Bobby Cho, of the bitcoin exchange company Cumberland, explained to CNBC, is due to a “limited access” to the market by the companies. brokers to their customers.
After all, it is a relatively small market, since the operations of the first day are estimated at more than 50 million dollars and the capitalization of the bitcoin is about 280,000 million.
Compared to the upward trend of the bitcoin futures that broke into the market today, the price of the cryptocurrency also rose on Monday and at the close of the stock market marked another record, exceeding $ 17,000.
The cryptocurrency, based on decentralized “blockchain” technology, started this year below $ 1,000 and has increased its value at a faster pace in recent days, before entering a regularized market.
Cameron Winklevoss, who has amassed a fortune in bitcoins with his brother Tyler and runs the Gemini exchange platform, used by CBOE, said before the debut of the futures that the cryptocurrency has a long journey and believes it will alter the price of gold .
In this sense, some analysts pointed out to CNBC that the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies may be affecting investments in gold and public debt bonds, which have fallen this week at the same time when they usually tend to evolve in opposite directions.
Despite everything, the bitcoin continues to generate doubts among experts, who warn that it is part of a bubble because of its volatility, the result of numerous transactions that have collapsed this week the houses of change and, today, the CBOE platform in several occasions after the launch of futures.
One of the biggest critics of the bitcoin, the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, gave the arm to twist this week and although he said he still considered himself “skeptical”, he said he would “openly” see the cryptocurrencies if they were properly controlled and regulated.
CBOE is the first firm that is offering a bitcoin futures market, but on December 18 it will be followed by CME, the most important financial derivatives platform in the United States, and by 2018 the Nasdaq has announced that it has the same intentions
