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.

Comments

I'm rich

[110010001000]

I cashed out all my Flooz and put it all into Bitcoin. Who is laughing now?

It's a trap!

[gweihir]

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.

So who's buying the bitcoins?

[Kenja]

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...

nomorebitcoinstories

[hackertourist]

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.

We will see

[Quato]

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.

Re:We will see

[EvilSS]

I'd go with amateur speculation investors trying to grab the hype dragon's tail after it's almost passed by. Besides being on OK method to transfer large sums outside the normal banking system, it doesn't have much practical use these days. Insane transaction fees and transaction times make it useless for everyday use. Even before this last week you were looking at $4-$6 per transaction. Last week it peaked at over $26 and even then transactions could take hours to confirm. That makes it useless for pretty much every retail use outside of maybe big-ticket items. Great if you want to buy a Lambo, not so good for buying groceries. It also doesn't help when the exchanges crash when they are needed most during the big price swings. What good is a huge gain if you can't sell to realize the profit.

Re:We will see

[allcoolnameswheretak]

From my humble perspective, the price of Bitcoin is rising so spectacularly because there are so few sellers.

Who in their right mind would sell Bitcoin when it has been rising non-stop and therefore *seems* to be such a great investment? It's a self fulfilling prophecy - everyone expects it to rise so nobody is selling so those who want in have to pay exorbitant prices.

But this same fact also makes it completely unsuitable as a currency. The volatility is too high and the fluidity is too low. At the moment the system is setup more like a Ponzi-Scheme: Those buying now at exorbitant prices are hoping to find a bigger fool that will buy from them at even greater prices. It will work for a while but nobody can tell when the whole thing will unravel.

So I understand Bitcoin from this Ponzi-Scheme/gambling point of view. The big mystery to me are those people that are really invested into Bitcoin out of conviction that it is the future. As I understand it there are severe technical limitations that make it impractical to perform transactions in Bitcoin and put the whole thing at risk:
- being a node in the Bitcoin network will require increasing amounts of very powerful hardware, so at some point only corporations or very rich people will be able to handle it, making it less democratic and independent than it was envisioned
- Bitcoin takes an ever increasing amount of energy to operate
- transactions will take longer and longer to run as the blockchain gets bigger and bigger
- when Bitcoin ever reaches the mainstream it will become borderline unusable because the sheer amount of transactions will take forever to process

Sounds to me like Bitcoin doesn't scale very well.

Re:We will see

[religionofpeas]

Sounds to me like Bitcoin doesn't scale very well.

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.

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.

Gambling time!

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Bubbles gonna pop

[grnbrg]

I'm laughing all the way to the bank.