Futures Go-live as Bitcoin Prices near $17,000

The world’s largest future exchange, CBOE, launched a Bitcoin future product recently.

So far, so good for Bitcoin: the current price is $16,938, states CoinMarketCap. This is up approximately 23% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently caped at $283 billion.

In the first 2 hours, CBOE states, more than 800 Bitcoin futures were traded. This huge influx of investors shut down the exchange’s site.

On January 17, Bitcoin future prices were at $18,630. The February 14 expiration date claimed prices at $19,140. Trading was automatically stopped several times (this is a circuit breaker and calms down volatility) because of the quickly rising prices of bitcoin.

Bitcoin futures launched at CME and Nasdaq on December 18, and will launch again in January.

Futures allow investors to speculate on the price of an asset. They are often viewed as a gauge of an asset’s future prices. Launching Bitcoin futures on major U.S exchanges is important. It allows large investors (including institution investors) to invest without purchasing the product (Bitcoin.)

Bitcoin is looking positive. The cryptocurrency’s price hit a high of more than $18,200 on December 8. It reversed to $13,349 the next Sunday.