- Bitcoin futures went live on Cboe Global Markets, the Chicago-exchange group, Sunday night.
- Both futures and spot bitcoin were trading up Monday morning.
- Liquidity on the market was thin soon after the launch of the new market and Cboe's website crashed.
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Bitcoin futures market send bitcoin up $1,100
Bitcoin futures let investors bet on the future price of the red-hot coin.
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It doesn't look like too many bears are pouring into the new bitcoin futures market.
The price of new contracts set to expire in January were trading 11% higher Monday morning at $17,830, according to data from Bloomberg.
Cboe's future contracts, which trade under the ticker XBT, started the first trading session Sunday night at arund $16,000, a premium over the price of bitcoin in the underlying spot markt. Bitcoin shot up more than $1,000 with the ten minutes after investors could start purchasing contracts at 6:00 p.m. ET.
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Bitcoin continued a tear into Monday morning, traing up against the US dollar at $16,240 a coin.
Trading in the early stages of the new futures was muted. Only 800 contracts traded within the first two hours of the market being live, according to Cboe. At last check, 2,866 contracts for January were purchase. Still, volumes abd the bullishness of the market impressed one trader.
"There was more volume than I was expecting," Garrett See, the CEO of DV Chain, the cryptocurrency trading division of Chicago-based DV Trading, told Business Insider.
"It was difficult for folks to get access to this market on day one since only some brokers were clearing trades for clients," he added.
JPMorgan and Citigroup, which are two of the largest futures brokers, did not participate in the market Sunday. Nor did Societe Generale. Goldman Sachs said it would clear futures for some clients.
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"The futures are trading a pretty significant premium to the spot," See said a few hours after the new market went live."That is surprising to me."
"I would have expected it to trade in the middle of the range of where spot bitcoin trades across the different exchanges," he added.
According to See, this suggest people aren't running in to short the market and long-term holders aren't dumping their exposure.
"It's really encouraging futures are trading at such a big premium," See said.
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:
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"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
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.
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