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Nasdaq Plans To Offer Bitcoin Futures In Early 2018 (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Nasdaq is planning to launch contracts for bitcoin futures in the first half of 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal, which will enable investors to predict and put money on the future price of the currency. The Wall Street Journal also reports that broker Cantor Fitzgerald will be launching bitcoin derivatives on its own exchange in the first half of next year as well, making for yet another brokerage to help make bitcoin a more mainstream financial instrument. The relative youth and volatility of the currency still keeps many investors away, of course, but bitcoin is probably here to stay, even if this is just a bubble. New uses for regular folks to spend with the currency continue to rise, like the UK Visa card based on bitcoin and Square's testing of the currency in its payment app.
Futures are used to manipulate the prices of commodities....
By not having to actually own the underlying commodity, the 'futures' contracts bought and sold create a artificial system which allows control over a resource. Unless the futures sellers are required to actually OWN the bitcoins they are selling 'in the future'...which gets real fuzzy, real fast.
So Bitcoin mining involves running a special computer whose sole purpose is to waste electricity. If you have a solar panel I suppose that isn't an issue but if you live where coal is used, you are adding to pollution/global warming.
When do you think bitcoin bubble will burst and why it is before Nasdaq bitcoin futures market open?
As John Maynard Keynes is quoted as saying, "The markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."
(* no evidence that he actually did say this, though. The earliest use is A. Gary Schilling.
...but this is the exception. The instant that people can bet money that bitcoin will decline, they will. And when a massive number of people short bitcoin, people that are long bitcoin will panic and sell. Look for the bubble to pop in the first half of 2018!
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Get out now. This is pure bubble speculation. There is nothing holding BC up other than people's irrational behavior. If this isn't a sign that BC is in a bubble then nothing else is. The whole thing is going to come tumbling down hard and fast.
Even if it is "bubble speculation", those who got in when it was $2 could have been advised to get out when it hit $100, or $200, or $500, or $1,000, or $5,000, or $10,000. If you've "said it before" a year ago, those people are now 5 times richer if they ignored your advice. Since we avoided the psychological $10,000 barrier (which did show a big drop afterwards), the next big psychological barrier is $20k. If I had BTC myself now, I wouldn't sell until it got close to $20k now.
The truth is, we don't know when a correction will occur. The entrance of big banks and investment firms probably means the value will stabilize. It will still swing, but less wildly. A complete "burst" will probably never happen now... but it's also likely there won't be any "invest $1000 and become rich in a few years" stories anymore either.
It's too late to make money, and odds are, short term, if you invest now, you will lose money. The entrance of long-term players and less likely to panic players like banks means that the value will stabilize- even if there is nothing backing it up besides public perception. Public perception is all that makes any modern currency have any value.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Yesterday, a total of 1 million bitcoins were traded on exchanges for a total of $10 billion. Selling one bitcoin is easy. You can open an account on an exchange, deposit your bitcoin, and as soon as your account is credited, you can sell it the next second and get your $10000 (or whatever the price is at that moment)