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.
The news comes as a boon for the bitcoin value. With news in the past couple of days that the cryptocurrency had passed $10,000, many were thinking that the perceived bubble would pop and prices would crash back to the $6,000 mark. In fact, the news from the CFTC has only boosted the price of bitcoin with CoinMarketCap.com reporting that the price is now sitting at $11,210, up 12.23% in the last 24 hours.
The Cboe said that its bitcoin futures would probably launch before the end of the year and Nasdaq also confirmed to CNBC that it would launch bitcoin futures as soon as the second quarter of 2018.
Source: CNBC