Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Futures Surge In First Day Of Trading (npr.org)
On their first day of trading, bitcoin futures surged past $18,000, adding to a streak for the digital currency that began the year at just $1,000 and has nearly tripled in value over the past month alone. From a report: Reuters reports that bitcoin futures, traded through the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), saw January contracts, which opened at $15,460 in New York on Sunday evening, leap to a high of $17,170 during Asian hours. Trading, which began at 6 p.m. ET (5 p.m. CT), was so intense that halts designed to cool volatility were triggered twice on the CBOE. The halts are "not surprising based on the volatility of the underlying [asset]. The futures are behaving as expected and designed," Tom Lehrkinder, senior analyst at consulting firm Tabb Group, was quoted by CNBC as saying.
I cashed out all my Flooz and put it all into Bitcoin. Who is laughing now?
At this time, anybody that still has BC is just trying to quietly get rid of them before the big crash. Hence they need lots of fools to buy.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Can't figure out the buy high, sell low thing that seems to be going on. Could it be the Chinese using Bitcoin to get their cash out of the country now that they can't buy Seattle realestate? Or is it just run of the mill money laundering...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Slashdot: News about bitcoin. Stuff that's boring.
You can copy and paste the comments from the last 100 BTC stories verbatim, there's nothing new to say at this point.
Is the price rising because of a real value, or inflated because of people thinking they will get rich quick? I predict a lot of sad investors. I'd think most businesses would shy away from accepting BitCoin unless the currency has some sort of stability.
Seriously, who knows what BitCoin is going to do?
I want to know who's buying/selling puts and gets at ~$18K for Pete's sake. Futures trading may smooth out the peaks of BTC some, but the volatility of BTC is huge, given there is literally nothing but the belief it will be valuable at some time in the future.
Somebody is going to make a killing trading these futures, but I will guarantee that it won't likely be you unless you are able to play the futures game and then it's anybody's guess. If the future contracts are hitting the trading stops on the first day, it's a crap shoot. Is BTC going up or down? Flip a coin. Want to buy futures then trade them in the money? Great, but hitting the stops may keep you from realizing a profit. So you have a 50/50 chance to be "in the money" while you have a less than zero chance of not being able to close the position and clear a profit. This means you have a less than 50/50 chance of making money.
Don't do it.... At least don't use money you cannot afford to lose.. You are basically playing roulette, and the odds are not in your favor. I don't want to hear the complaining about all the money lost when the bottom falls out and the panic selling starts.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It would be hilarious if bitcoin was designed to have criminal organizations invest trillions into a relatively untraceable currency and then have a kill switch that rendered all wallets null and void.
On their first day of trading, bitcoin futures surged past $18,000, adding to a streak for the digital currency that began the year at just $1,000 and has nearly tripled in value over the past month alone.
First off, saying bitcoin futures surged past a particular price is somewhat misleading because futures contracts on an exchange don't have a single price nor is that price the same as the price of the underlying asset. A futures contract has a price for the asset on the delivery date but the price of the futures contract is separate from the price they'll pay for the asset. The price of a futures contract might be $50 for an asset with a price of $18000. The price of the futures contract is dependent on the delivery date and the difference of the price from the current underlying asset price.
A futures contract on an asset is not the same thing as the underlying asset. A futures contract is a contract to buy an asset at a predetermined price at a date in the future. The actual market value of the asset at the delivery date may or may not match the price on the future contract. (in fact it almost certainly will not) Anyone buying a futures contract in bitcoin is doing one of two things. They are either speculating on future prices of bitcoin or they are hedging the value of bitcoins they hold to ensure that they can sell them at a known price. Either way the price for a futures contract on bitcoin isn't the price of bitcoin.
So saying bitcoin futures have increased in price simply means that there is a market consensus that the value of bitcoin is likely to rise but it says absolutely nothing about what the actual value of bitcoin is or what it will be. Whoever wrote this article doesn't understand the difference between an asset and a futures contract on that asset.
Bitcoin is an energy hog and a money-laundering black hole. Killit!
Table-ized A.I.
I'm laughing all the way to the bank.
When it does, I want to see the look on the face of that stupid fucker who was just on CNN talking to Richard Quest, using "crypto" as a shorthand term for cryptocurrencies. Fuck that guy, I hope he loses everything for his linguistic war crimes.
Also it was weird watching a wall street suit talk on a mainstream news channel about how much he likes some of the more private cryptocurrencies, which are practically indistinguishable from purpose-built financial crime instruments. How are the relevant authorities not in red-alert, scramble-all-bureaucrats mode now that this stuff is in their faces?
Remember the good ol' days, when any company that conducted any business that remotely resembled today's cryptocurrency exchanges would've been furiously squashed like a particularly large and creepy bug by the nearest government? Remember when MMORPG virtual goods exchanges were under the microscope as possible avenues for money laundering? What happened to that? Did Trump stick a fox in the relevant henhouse to allow this madness to happen?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is it just people who want some part of 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist?
Halting of trading has always seemed to me to be a scam in itself. It prevents the big drops that allow patient people to make some money.
I think it is a funny idea, but it is interesting.
The people in the know aren't. The financial pundits predicted a drop in bitcoin value and shorting bitcoin contracts once the futures trading opened. Bitcoin took an anticipatory drop a couple days before. Trading futures opened and quickly pushed bitcoin higher. This isn't currency, it isn't a hard asset, its not even like a stock. It's a great mechanism to move value in short order. Worried about that whole "buy an item for $50, and the merchant gets $45 or 55 when it clears" example? Well I can send BTC worth $50,000 to buy a car in Germany and the transaction will clear in under an hour. and cost $3-6. An international wire transfer goes from my bank, to the correspondent bank, to their banks correspondent bank, to their bank and can take a week to clear, but usually 3-4 business days. And costs about $40 from the US side and often similar on the other end. A wire originated in Turkey for 20,000 euros into a US Bank account cost over $400 in fees and took a currency conversion loss of $450 USD on the value at the time of the transaction top of that, so at the time $850 to move 27,900 dollars into the US account. If BITcoin were used, about a .1% fee on the exchanges at each end and using todays rates about 5-6 dollars transaction fee. so about $50 - $60 to move it netting, $800 more roughly and making 1/2 day at most instead of, in this particular case, 6 days. And no issues with time of day etc. to start the transaction. That's the real value of bitcoin. And what's really cool, if you're both on the same exchange, and have a buffer of bitcoins on each end, there's no fee in many cases as they move funds from your exchange bitcoin account to the destination bitcoin account without charge, and it's only the conversion to and from other fiat currency that costs you. Bitcoin will have arrived when I can buy a factory direct Tesla Model 3 in bitcoin while in Italy sipping a doppio.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Surely ones a futures market stabilizes some that should improve things there. Bitcoin payment processors will be able to use futures contracts to help create a payment that's less volatile.
Expecting derivative financial instruments to make the market more stable is a recipe for tears. That is NOT what they do in the real world, especially when there is a lot of speculation going on which is almost entirely what is happening with bitcoin. Prices don't change that fast when people are using derivative instruments for hedging purposes. All that is happening is a bunch of greedy people playing a game of "Who is the Greater Fool".
That's why developers are working on higher layer protocols, such as Lightning Network, that need to handle nearly all transactions, and only use the underlying layer-1 for settling combined payments.
That's evidence that the system isn't working, not evidence that it is sound.
Compare it to the time when we had a gold standard. People transacted with pieces of paper, each representing a bit of gold, but the gold remained in the vaults.
You do realize that the gold standard system didn't work, right? We left the gold standard because it was fundamentally broken and there is no evidence to suggest that bitcoin will do any better. I think blockchains have some pretty interesting applications but bitcoin is unlikely to be among them.