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Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

bloomberg.com

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Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#101

Post by wpietri »

colemannugent wrote: post #7

> ... New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is the only one of the four major U.S. exchange operators without public plans to offer bitcoin derivatives. That's pretty big. A couple years ago people were very skeptical that the big players would ever start dabbling in Bitcoin.

In some sense, they're still not. Derivatives don't require much involvement in the underlying commodity. For example, consider weather derivatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_derivative

E.g., the CME's weather futures and options:

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/weather/

It's not like the Merc is really involved in weather. They just let people gamble on the weather.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#102

Post by nicky0 »

zzzzzzzza wrote: post #69
ceejayoz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as a store of value, it's actually pretty good. It's got a pretty short, volatile history to be deciding that.

also much more difficult for average person or even gigantic corporation to secure than a physical good e.g. gold. And coins change over time with forks n crap, gold just stays gold.

It's very easy to secure. Just generate a private key offline and never tell it to anyone.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#103

Post by WJW »

g09980 wrote: post #73
slg wrote: post #30

There was a 4 hour stretch this morning in which Bitcoin lost over 20% of its value. In the last 45 minutes it is up 13%. I wonder what a long straddle would cost on this thing.

Bitcoin has recovered from dips really well in the past weeks due to major buy pressure. Unfortunately GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went down at the same time this time around, making it impossible to buy the dip.

Straddles are priced on volatility, so the actual price is not relevant.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#104

Post by semi-extrinsic »

flignats wrote: post #91
deadmetheny wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how much of it will be settled in actual BTC vs USD Exactly none of it, considering that Bitcoin as a currency is fairly useless unless you're buying drugs or you're a botnet operator.

I don't get it - btc is worse than cash for buying drugs and botnets. Cash is anonymous, how do people forget that?

For drugs easily available from your local dealer, you're probably right. But if you wanna buy something fancy, or for anything to do with botnets if you live in the US/Western Europe, cash is a no-go since you can't easily move it internationally.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#105

Post by krrrh »

knownothing wrote: post #79
swalsh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been a negative detractor of bitcoin. But then I realized the problem was it was marketed wrong. As a currency, it's a nightmare of a creation. But as a store of value, it's actually pretty good. As long as you don't buy in at one of the speculative bubbles (which admittedly is when the majority of people get in), it's been pretty good at more or less maintaining its value. As a non-physical thing, it's a…

> As long as you don't buy in at one of the speculative bubbles I'm not so sure about that. You could have bought BTC anytime before the past week or so and it would have appreciated significantly, regardless of whether you bought it in a peak or trough. It's just a question of magnitude. E.g. if you bought 1 BTC at the lowest or highest price in 2015 you would still have outrageous returns on it today. This is not t…

Let’s see how everyone feels after the next correction. The headlines today seem to change every time I load google news. Up 10%, down 20%. There’s no way to know where it will go from here.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#106

Post by [deleted] »

eternalban wrote: post #99
g09980 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has recovered from dips really well in the past weeks due to major buy pressure. Unfortunately GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went down at the same time this time around, making it impossible to buy the dip.

> Unfortunately GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went down at the same time > Conveniently GDAX (and Coinbase), Gemini, and other exchanges all went down at the same time

[deleted]

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#107

Post by nicky0 »

wyldfire wrote: post #42
brndnmtthws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin differs from commodities like gold in that it's something which can be trivially transferred electronically. It doesn't make much sense to 'buy' cash instruments when you can just get the real thing.

Holding any commodity comes with a huge amount of risk (what do I do with these oil barrels? ... livestock? ... crops?). Settling futures would involve moving these things from place to place. But whither bitcoin, you say? Moving those is easy! Yes, but holding them is hard. Who wants Your Favorite Mutual Fund to hold bitcoins? Not them, that's for sure. There's much more risk there than necessary.

In what way is holding Bitcoin hard? That's the point of it. It's a store of value that's easy to hold directly.

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#108

Post by makk »

swalsh wrote: post #46
mads wrote: post #35

Man, this is just weird. I just bought 0.05 Bitcoins (you know FOMO and all that) and it just feels so much more empty than back in the days when I mined them myself with my brand new dual Xeon CPU and later on was thinking grand thoughts and building little projects with epaper ink displays to display QR codes on small devices that would work on low bandwidth connections and maybe offline. Lots of problems to be sol…

I've always been a negative detractor of bitcoin. But then I realized the problem was it was marketed wrong. As a currency, it's a nightmare of a creation. But as a store of value, it's actually pretty good. As long as you don't buy in at one of the speculative bubbles (which admittedly is when the majority of people get in), it's been pretty good at more or less maintaining its value. As a non-physical thing, it's a…

Something that consumes an unbounded amount of electricity is hardly a "non-physical thing."

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#109

Post by cortesoft »

mirimir wrote: post #97
varbo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to send $700 in bitcoin to purchase something. It's going to cost me $65 to buy the coins and several hours of time. Of course, I am banned from Coinbase for an innocous bank mistake. There's literally no other options to buy coins at 1-2% in the US.

Create an Electrum wallet. Find a friend who has Bitcoin. Meet for lunch/dinner. They transfer ~70 mBTC to you, with a 1-2 mBTC fee. After 2-3 confirmations, you give them $710-$720 cash. Done.

With a process so simple, why would anyone ever use cash?!

Re: Nasdaq Plans to Introduce Bitcoin Futures

#110

Post by wpietri »

fragsworth wrote: post #16
wmf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just GDAX: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/cf-bitcoin-reference-rate.ht...

Oh, I didn't realize. At some point I read it was just GDAX. Even still, cash settlement is terrible.

Why's that? For some derivatives, cash settlement is the only thing that makes sense. E.g., look at their weather derivatives. It's not like anybody wants to take delivery on a petagram of cold air.

The majority use case for Bitcoin isn't using Bitcoin at all. It's speculating on Bitcoin. Those people definitionally don't care about Bitcoin for its own sake.

I'm pretty sure the exchanges are offering these not because anybody actually has forward needs to buy or sell Bitcoin, as they would with, say, wheat. People just want to speculate. For those people, cash settlement is exactly what they're after.

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