The bitcoin price has increased to over $6,550, after dipping below $5,600 on November 12. Analysts have attributed the recent increase in the price of bitcoin to CME Group’s confirmed launch of its bitcoin futures exchange by the second week of December.
Regulated Bitcoin Futures Exchange by December
Over the past two months, several high profile investors including billionaire hedge fund legend Mike Novogratz emphasized that a rapidly growing number of institutional and retail investors are preparing to engage in bitcoin and invest in the market.
Most of the large-scale hedge funds and institutional investors can only invest in assets and stores of value with high liquidity, because in most cases, they are required to allocate tens of millions of dollars in minimum.
In the past 12 months, the liquidity of bitcoin as increased substantially along with its market valuation, attracting the interests of institutional investors. In the upcoming months, upon the launch of CME’s bitcoin futures exchange, infrastructure around bitcoin for large-scale investors would likely improve at an exponential rate.
As Novogratz noted:
“I started investing in Bitcoin and the whole ecosystem when I was at Fortress and then as a private investor I’ve been very active in the space. I never thought I would come out of retirement but the space is so exciting right now and decided to build a business, hired a whole bunch of smart guys, we’re going to raise a fund, we’re going to build a business, and hopefully taking advantage of what I see as a decentralized revolution.”
The CME Group’s confirmed launch of a bitcoin futures exchange could have very likely pushed the bitcoin price to increase from $6,100 to $6,500 in the past 24 hours, given that the US market remains as the second largest bitcoin exchange market behind Japan.
Considering that the confirmation of the bitcoin futures exchange launch has garnered significant optimism towards bitcoin in the short-term, upon the completion of the launch, it is likely that the bitcoin price would initiate a strong rally and achieve new highs.
No Uncertainty in the Market
With the SegWit2x hard fork cancelled, the Bitcoin Cash community developing its own project, and Bitcoin Gold losing support from the community, there exists no uncertainty in the mid-term within the bitcoin market. Investors are satisfied, confident, and certain that the bitcoin price will recover back to its previous high of $7,800, as it always have done historically.
Earlier this month, in an interview with Reuters, CME Group chairman Leo Melamed stated that he had initially struggled in adopting bitcoin and its philosophies. However over time, he began to understand its decentralized structure.
“The world in the 1970s didn’t look at currency trading as a valid instrument of finance. I too went from not believing (in bitcoin) to wanting to know more,” said Mohamed.
In the long-term, the traditional finance market will demonstrate a drastic change in mindset towards bitcoin, as it evolves into a secure and widely accepted store of value.