Stephen Gandel, Columnist

Bitcoin Futures Are No Bubble Bellwether

Don't expect trading on the Cboe to literally tell you the future.

December 11, 2017 at 1:54 PM UTC

Stephen Gandel is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering banking and equity markets. He was previously a deputy digital editor for Fortune and an economics blogger at Time. He has also covered finance and the housing market.

1513001003_pic — Photographer: IAN KINGTON/AFP/Getty Images

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Bitcoin just passed its first major Wall Street test, but cryptocurrency bulls shouldn't read too much into it.

Bitcoin futures began trading Sunday evening on the Cboe --the first "Wall Street" exchange to list the digital currency -- and the direction was straight up. By 11:30 p.m. New York time, the contract had already been halted twice because the price was rising too fast. Early Monday morning, the contract was at $17,700, or $2,700 above where it started trading 12 hours before. Bitcoin rose, too, up $831 to $16,475.