The bitcoin price surged to a new all-time high on Tuesday following CME Group’s announcement that it intends to list bitcoin futures contracts before the end of the year.
World’s Largest Derivatives Exchange to Launch Bitcoin Futures
This morning, CME Group — the world’s largest derivatives exchange — revealed that, pending regulatory approval, it will enable trading of bitcoin futures contracts before the end of the year, making it the second U.S. regulated trading platform to offer these products to institutional investors. LedgerX launched bitcoin derivatives earlier this month and has already experienced higher-than-expected volumes.
The availability of bitcoin futures contracts is expected to introduce a wave of Wall Street capital into the crypto markets, increasing liquidity and — presumably — ratcheting up the bitcoin price. This also means that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will review future applications for Bitcoin ETFs that trade in futures contracts. The SEC had previously stated that it could not review these applications until futures contracts were listed on regulated exchanges.
Bitcoin Price Surges to $6,450
In response to the CME announcement, which came on the ninth anniversary of the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper, the bitcoin price began to surge, eventually reaching an all-time high of $6,450 on Bitfinex, the highest-volume bitcoin exchange.
At present, the bitcoin price is trading at a global average of $6,387, according to CoinMarketCap data, giving bitcoin a $106.3 billion market cap. This advance also lifted the total cryptocurrency market cap to a new all-time high of $182.7 billion.
Despite bitcoin’s rapid year-to-date climb, many industry analysts believe that, bolstered by Wall Street’s embrace of cryptocurrency, bitcoin will continue to rally for the foreseeable future. Longtime bitcoin bull Max Keiser — who recently predicted that the bitcoin price will reach $10,000 in the near future — even forecast that “laws will be created” and changed to accommodate the Wall Street investors who will move into the markets in the coming months. “Wall [Street] is predictable,” he concluded, adding that, “there is no top.”
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