Citing an internal e-mail, The Block reported that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group [CME Group] opened the doors for cryptocurrency investments and institutional investors in 2019 via its bitcoin Futures.
bitcoin Futures is a contract that will let customers bet on the future price of bitcoin. CME Group first launched BTC futures in 2017 and according to the internal letter, the futures contract is taking off without a hitch. The internal e-mail read,
“Yesterday (Feb 19th) set a new record with 18,338 contracts traded, this is equivalent to 91,690 bitcoin or $360MN… Q1 2019 is off to a strong start, ADV has improved to 4,630 contracts (23,150 equivalent bitcoin), up ~13% from Q4 2018 while [open interest] rose to 4,076 contracts, an improvement of 21.5% over Q4 2018.”
In addition to the above, the CME Group has about 2,100 accounts and about 30 unique firms that have traded the contract. The e-mail stated,
“Institutional interest has gradually risen and the number of LOIHs (Large Open Interest Holders) has been holding steady around 43 holders since November. A LOIH is an entity that holds at least 25 BTC contracts.”
Further, CryptoCompare’s research for January 2019 shows a significant increase in the number of bitcoin Futures contracts traded on CME when compared to its counterparts. The daily volumes increased by 20%, from $66.5M to $79.9M in January.
With the anticipation around the launch of Bakkt building up, it is expected that the prices of cryptocurrencies would shoot up. 2019 started with a rally, contrary to the general bearish trend that overtook the cryptocurrency market in 2018. In fact, the rally pushed the price of BTC to touch major resistance at $4000.
Another bitcoin-related news that could affect the cryptoverse is the possible approval of the bitcoin ETF proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC].
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Published at Sat, 23 Feb 2019 11:03:43 +0000