Bitcoin Drops Following CME Futures, Investors Still Buy In At 100% Premium

Bitcoin futures prices fell this week after CME Group launched the world’s second Bitcoin futures contract on Monday.

In contrast to the market’s 20 percent growth after Cboe’s pioneering futures launched on Dec. 10th, Bitcoin prices are tracking sideways and dropped almost seven percent in the 12 hours before press time Tuesday.

Each CME contract represents five Bitcoins, whereas a contract on Cboe represents one Bitcoin. The first day’s trading at CME saw slightly higher volumes than day one at Cboe a week prior.

Monday saw CME futures close at $19,100, 2.1 percent less than the debut price envisaged by the exchange.

Garrett See, chief executive of trader DV Chain told the WSJ:

“There was some fear ahead of the Cboe futures launch that Wall Street was going to come in and short Bitcoin, but we haven’t seen that.”

As Bitcoin’s latest growth spurt appears to take a break, correcting below $18,000, hungry investors are meanwhile prepared to buy shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust at double the current market value.

As commentators note on Twitter Tuesday, GBTC is currently trading at an ‘implied’ Bitcoin price approaching $38,000.

$GBTC premium at > 100%. This can be seen as a FOMO Index.https://t.co/LovHS2AAzJ pic.twitter.com/rfAUGMNXTl

— BambouClub (@BambouClub) December 19, 2017

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Markets are also seeing an influx of investments into altcoins this week, with assets across the top 50 and beyond seeing major upticks and even new all-time highs.