Latest News On Cryptocurrencies

Having landed on Wall Street with a bang, bitcoin is solidly bid and looks set to scale new heights. As per CoinDesk's  Bitcoin Price Index , the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization rose to a high of $16,773.04 at 08:00 UTC today, and was last seen trading at $16,500 levels. Going by  CoinMarketCap  data, bitcoin (BTC) has appreciated 16 percent in the last 24 hours. It hasn't all been smooth sailing this week, however. Following all-time highs on Dec. 8, prices  fell to $13,000  yesterday before recovering to $15,700 at the time of bitcoin futures launch on the CBOE. Approximately four hours after the debut, the BTC contract on the CBOE (which expires in January) spiked 20 percent and triggered two trading halts. Further, a surge of traffic to the  CBOE website caused delays and outages, but failed to deter the cryptocurrency from regaining altitude. With doors now open for mainstream investors, BTC is showing no s...

There has been much speculation on the effect  CME  and  CBOE  bitcoin futures will have on bitcoin. Some fear bitcoin futures will give institutional investors the ability to short bitcoin at volumes the community has never seen before and will cause a massive price crash. Others think that the massive inflow of institutional money will push bitcoin prices to heights beyond the community’s imagination. In response, Andreas has come forward  with a presentation  on how bitcoin prices are determined on CME futures. The Andreas Connection Andreas Antonopoulos is a Greek-British, bitcoin thought leader who has been an early advocate of bitcoin since 2012. Around 9 months ago, Andreas took a position on the  oversight board  of the Chicago Mercantile Excange & Chicago Board of Trade (The CME Group Inc.) for bitcoin reference rates. The CME Group is an American financial market company operating an options and futures exchange that is ...

CME Long versus Short Positions In every futures contract, there’s a long and a short position and an underlying asset (in this case bitcoin). The long position is taken by the trader who wishes to profit from an increase in the price of the underlying, and the short position is taken by the trader who wishes to profit from a decrease in the price of the underlying. The price of bitcoin is determined by the  CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR),  a price index composed from Kraken, Itbit, GDAX, and Bitstamp. It is very unusual for two traders to show up at the exchange at the exact same time for a trade. Instead, the counterparty in the futures contract is almost always a market maker who hedges themselves by buying or shorting the underlying in order to earn the spread of the trade. Thus, we have two scenarios: Trader long, market maker short Trader short, market maker long Trader long, market maker short Long : Bitcoin has a virtually uncapped upside...

The world’s largest futures exchange, CME, has announced that it has completed a self-certification with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and will launch its bitcoin futures on December 18th. The CFTC also said that Cboe Futures Exchange plans to launch bitcoin contracts and that the Cantor Exchange also self-certified a new contract for bitcoin binary options. CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo said: “Bitcoin, a virtual currency, is a commodity unlike any the Commission has dealt with in the past. As a result, we have had extensive discussions with the exchanges regarding the proposed contracts, and CME, CFE and Cantor have agreed to significant enhancements to protect customers and maintain orderly markets.” For those of you not up on your financial terminology, futures, according to Investopedia, are financial contracts which obligate the buyer to purchase an asset or the seller to sell an asset, such as bitcoin, at a predetermined future date and price. ...

Bitcoin future to be traded on US exchange US financial markets company CME group has said it will lunch its Bitcoin futures contract on December 18 to provide a regulated trading platform for the cryptocurrency future market. CME said  it self-certified the initial listing of Bitcoin future and that it has received approval from the US derivatives regulator. It will be traded on the CME Globex platform.