Stephen Gandel, Columnist

Bitcoin Futures May Offer No Way Out

The large gap between prices on bitcoin futures and the underlying cryptocurrency raises a warning sign.

December 12, 2017 at 2:27 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.

1513092304_pic — Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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Bitcoin traders and watchers have been busy heralding the entrance of cryptocurrencies futures. What they should really be focused on is the exit.

The first 24 hours of the Cboe Global Markets Inc.'s bitcoin futures contract went pretty well. By Monday evening, 3,969 of the Cboe's main January contracts had been bought and sold -- not big by established futures market standards, but more than many people expected. With some brokers barring shorting, there was some concerns that buyers wouldn't be able to find sellers. That didn't happen. There also wasn't a huge flood of people waiting to bet against bitcoin and driving the price of the contract down. Instead, it ended up $3,545 on the day at $18,545. Bitcoin rose, too.