Good Evening, Steemians!
As some of you might know, beginning tonight at 5:00 (or 6:00?) PM EST traders will be able to openly buy and sell Bitcoin future contracts. If you're not familiar with futures contracts, they are basically paper speculation. If you buy one at a certain price and you hit your target, you are rewarded. If you don't, you will end up owing money. As far as I know, it's just betting on the future of whatever commodity you're dealing with (ex. GLD and SLV futures contracts).
I just have a question for everyone:
What do you think this will do for the price of Bitcoin from now on?
Do you think this will have a heavy influence on Bitcoin's price?
When you purchase a future's contract, you are not actually buying the commodity. Do you really think this will this be able to sway actual holders of BTC to buy or sell their holdings? Another thing I thought of is that this actually might benefit the VERY LARGEST holders of Bitcoin in that they could sell futures contracts and then actually sell most of their Bitcoin and take tons of profit from both the sale of Bitcoin and the contract sale.
Some people say this will keep the market honest, but I actually think it will do just the opposite. What say you? I would really like to know your take on the matter!