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Bitcoin Businesses The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin Futures Surge In First Day Of Trading (npr.org) 64

On their first day of trading, bitcoin futures surged past $18,000, adding to a streak for the digital currency that began the year at just $1,000 and has nearly tripled in value over the past month alone. From a report: Reuters reports that bitcoin futures, traded through the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), saw January contracts, which opened at $15,460 in New York on Sunday evening, leap to a high of $17,170 during Asian hours. Trading, which began at 6 p.m. ET (5 p.m. CT), was so intense that halts designed to cool volatility were triggered twice on the CBOE. The halts are "not surprising based on the volatility of the underlying [asset]. The futures are behaving as expected and designed," Tom Lehrkinder, senior analyst at consulting firm Tabb Group, was quoted by CNBC as saying.
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Bitcoin Futures Surge In First Day Of Trading

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  • I'm rich (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @11:47AM (#55716677) Homepage Journal
    I cashed out all my Flooz and put it all into Bitcoin. Who is laughing now?
    • by IMightB ( 533307 )

      I dunno... someone's going to fall. I do think that BC is valid, but trading at these prices is insane. the bubble will pop

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I do think that BC is valid

        Why is it valid? It's like paying $50 using Visa/MC and it being worth $45 or $55 by the time the merchant at the other end receives it.

        I think BTC has no value, because it is a service (money transfer), not a thing with intrinsic value. Gold can be used to make useful things. Stock prices are based on how much the company makes or is going to make. BTC has has none of that. It's like taking monopoly money and assigning arbitrary USD value to it... completely fake.

        • by krygny ( 473134 )

          Paper notes printed by governments have no intrinsic value either. Except that people generally (or universally) accept them as having value. You can't print them yourself (those are not accepted as having value) and you can't mine them. They can only be obtained in exchange for something else of commensurate value (labor, goods, services, knowledge, information, etc.)

          At one time, many people did not accept those "worthless" pieces of paper as being a valid currency. And now, most people will not accept a c

          • Of course not, but try to pay dept or taxes with anything else, money is usefull because no ne can refuse to accept it as payment. Bitcoins on the other hand...
          • Does the IRS accept bitcoin?
          • But they will, and there will be many, not just Bitcoin.

            I don't think so, on a few different levels and for a few different reasons.

            First, as to why there won't be many: It's too much to keep track of. You need to verify the integrity of each cryptocurrency and keep track of the exchange rate. It's not like people are just going to accept a cryptocurrency because it's been invented. So if cryptocurrencies do take hold, people will likely adopt a small number of well regulated ones. Far from providing a currency outside of government control, people will pro

        • Surely ones a futures market stabilizes some that should improve things there. Bitcoin payment processors will be able to use futures contracts to help create a payment that's less volatile.

          • Surely ones a futures market stabilizes some that should improve things there. Bitcoin payment processors will be able to use futures contracts to help create a payment that's less volatile.

            Expecting derivative financial instruments to make the market more stable is a recipe for tears. That is NOT what they do in the real world, especially when there is a lot of speculation going on which is almost entirely what is happening with bitcoin. Prices don't change that fast when people are using derivative instruments for hedging purposes. All that is happening is a bunch of greedy people playing a game of "Who is the Greater Fool".

  • It's a trap! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @11:53AM (#55716723)

    At this time, anybody that still has BC is just trying to quietly get rid of them before the big crash. Hence they need lots of fools to buy.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Ha joke's on them! Any large scale sell-off breaks all the exchanges. Can't crash if you can't sell it!
  • by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @11:57AM (#55716761)
    Can't figure out the buy high, sell low thing that seems to be going on. Could it be the Chinese using Bitcoin to get their cash out of the country now that they can't buy Seattle realestate? Or is it just run of the mill money laundering...
    • Is it just people who want some part of 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist?
  • by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @11:58AM (#55716767)

    Slashdot: News about bitcoin. Stuff that's boring.
    You can copy and paste the comments from the last 100 BTC stories verbatim, there's nothing new to say at this point.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Bits are for coins.

      You are all coins. Coins say bit. BIIIIIT! BIIIIIIT! Bit coins BIIIIIIT! Bit say the coins. YOU BITTY COINS!!

    • Sure, 1 BTC story is only worth $0.25 right now, but pretty soon it could be worth $25 or $2500. And then you'll be kicking yourself for not getting those 100 BTC stories when you had the chance!
  • Is the price rising because of a real value, or inflated because of people thinking they will get rich quick? I predict a lot of sad investors. I'd think most businesses would shy away from accepting BitCoin unless the currency has some sort of stability.
    • Re:We will see (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @12:24PM (#55717001)
      I'd go with amateur speculation investors trying to grab the hype dragon's tail after it's almost passed by. Besides being on OK method to transfer large sums outside the normal banking system, it doesn't have much practical use these days. Insane transaction fees and transaction times make it useless for everyday use. Even before this last week you were looking at $4-$6 per transaction. Last week it peaked at over $26 and even then transactions could take hours to confirm. That makes it useless for pretty much every retail use outside of maybe big-ticket items. Great if you want to buy a Lambo, not so good for buying groceries. It also doesn't help when the exchanges crash when they are needed most during the big price swings. What good is a huge gain if you can't sell to realize the profit.
    • From my humble perspective, the price of Bitcoin is rising so spectacularly because there are so few sellers.

      Who in their right mind would sell Bitcoin when it has been rising non-stop and therefore *seems* to be such a great investment? It's a self fulfilling prophecy - everyone expects it to rise so nobody is selling so those who want in have to pay exorbitant prices.

      But this same fact also makes it completely unsuitable as a currency. The volatility is too high and the fluidity is too low. At the moment

      • Sounds to me like Bitcoin doesn't scale very well.

        That's why developers are working on higher layer protocols, such as Lightning Network, that need to handle nearly all transactions, and only use the underlying layer-1 for settling combined payments.

        Compare it to the time when we had a gold standard. People transacted with pieces of paper, each representing a bit of gold, but the gold remained in the vaults.

        • That's why developers are working on higher layer protocols, such as Lightning Network, that need to handle nearly all transactions, and only use the underlying layer-1 for settling combined payments.

          That's evidence that the system isn't working, not evidence that it is sound.

          Compare it to the time when we had a gold standard. People transacted with pieces of paper, each representing a bit of gold, but the gold remained in the vaults.

          You do realize that the gold standard system didn't work, right? We left the gold standard because it was fundamentally broken and there is no evidence to suggest that bitcoin will do any better. I think blockchains have some pretty interesting applications but bitcoin is unlikely to be among them.

    • Is the price rising because of a real value, or inflated because of people thinking they will get rich quick?

      Since a bitcoin is nothing more than an answer to a riddle, that is an easy question. A bitcoin has no value. For some strange reason, is has a price, but please don't mix the two, as value and price have little in common nowadays. Value belongs to economy (things people do), while price belongs to finance (cashing big nonsense). If you want to get rich, don't make your hands dirty. If you want to be a member of society, by all means do.

  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday December 11, 2017 @12:09PM (#55716845)

    Seriously, who knows what BitCoin is going to do?

    I want to know who's buying/selling puts and gets at ~$18K for Pete's sake. Futures trading may smooth out the peaks of BTC some, but the volatility of BTC is huge, given there is literally nothing but the belief it will be valuable at some time in the future.

    Somebody is going to make a killing trading these futures, but I will guarantee that it won't likely be you unless you are able to play the futures game and then it's anybody's guess. If the future contracts are hitting the trading stops on the first day, it's a crap shoot. Is BTC going up or down? Flip a coin. Want to buy futures then trade them in the money? Great, but hitting the stops may keep you from realizing a profit. So you have a 50/50 chance to be "in the money" while you have a less than zero chance of not being able to close the position and clear a profit. This means you have a less than 50/50 chance of making money.

    Don't do it.... At least don't use money you cannot afford to lose.. You are basically playing roulette, and the odds are not in your favor. I don't want to hear the complaining about all the money lost when the bottom falls out and the panic selling starts.

    • by glitch! ( 57276 )

      I don't want to hear the complaining about all the money lost when the bottom falls out and the panic selling starts.

      Actually, I think you really do want to hear the complaining. :)

  • by Anonymous Coward

    It would be hilarious if bitcoin was designed to have criminal organizations invest trillions into a relatively untraceable currency and then have a kill switch that rendered all wallets null and void.

  • On their first day of trading, bitcoin futures surged past $18,000, adding to a streak for the digital currency that began the year at just $1,000 and has nearly tripled in value over the past month alone.

    First off, saying bitcoin futures surged past a particular price is somewhat misleading because futures contracts on an exchange don't have a single price nor is that price the same as the price of the underlying asset. A futures contract has a price for the asset on the delivery date but the price of the futures contract is separate from the price they'll pay for the asset. The price of a futures contract might be $50 for an asset with a price of $18000. The price of the futures contract is dependent o

    • Exactly. I have made a reasonable stack of money in futures, but must admit that trading in a market that halts twice in a day seems like a recipe for tears,

  • Bitcoin is an energy hog and a money-laundering black hole. Killit!

  • Halting of trading has always seemed to me to be a scam in itself. It prevents the big drops that allow patient people to make some money.

  • The people in the know aren't. The financial pundits predicted a drop in bitcoin value and shorting bitcoin contracts once the futures trading opened. Bitcoin took an anticipatory drop a couple days before. Trading futures opened and quickly pushed bitcoin higher. This isn't currency, it isn't a hard asset, its not even like a stock. It's a great mechanism to move value in short order. Worried about that whole "buy an item for $50, and the merchant gets $45 or 55 when it clears" example? Well I can send BTC

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