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- Bitcoin futures went live on Cboe Global Markets, the Chicago-exchange group, Sunday night.
- Liquidity appears to be thin and Cboe's website has crashed.
- The price of bitcoin soared by more than $1,000 after the contracts went live.
Bitcoin futures went live on Cboe Global Markets, the Chicago-based exchange group, Sunday evening and the price of the red-hot coin shot up
Cboe's future contracts, which trade under the ticker XBT, allow investors to bet on the future price of bitcoin. Bitcoin shot up over $1,000 after investors could start purchasing contracts at 6:00 p.m. ET.
According to data from CoinDesk, bitcoin soared from $14,509 a coin at 5:59 p.m. ET to $15,704 at 6:07 p.m. It gave up some of those gains and was trading at $15,178 at 6:11 p.m. The futures contracts were trading at $16,000 soon after the market went live, higher than where bitcoin is trading in the spot market at the time of print.
Trading in the early stages seemed to be muted, with only a couple hundred contracts purchased. Most trades were of just one contract.
Still, interest in the new market appeared to put pressure on Cboe. Its website experienced outages soon after trading of bitcoin futures was underway. Here's Cboe in a tweet:
"Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to http://www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable. All trading systems are operating normally."
"The launch is going as expected sans [Cboe's website] crashing," John Spallanzani, chief macro strategist of GFI Group, told Business Insider. "It speaks to the interest in bitcoin. There hasn't been this much interest in something since the internet boom."
Bitcoin futures are the latest evolution in the market surrounding the cryptocurrency, which has appreciated more than 1,400% this year. Two other exchange operators are also set to launch their own bitcoin futures contracts.
There are a number of reasons why bitcoin futures products are a big deal for Wall Street and the world of crypto. First, the launch of bitcoin futures by establishment firms is likely to to open the door to wider participation in bitcoin trading by other Wall Street firms. It could also pave the wave for an exchange-traded fund, which could bring more investments into the space. Most importantly, it could help dampen bitcoin's spine-tingling volatility.
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