With the Chicago Mercantile Exhange’s recent announcement that the trend-setting CME would be listing Bitcoin futures in Q4 2017, both traditional investors and crypto investors have been abuzz over the ramifications of such an unprecedented move.
When interest is high and Bitcoin is trending in the news and social media, the price of BTC has historically trended upwards, too.
So with the CME being literally the world’s largest regulated FX marketplace, their impending Bitcoin futures will likely create, or at least trigger, a bona fide boom in institutional and mainstream interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general the likes of which the space hasn’t seen before.
In the years ahead, there will be a milestone all crypto enthusiasts point back to as the moment when critical mass (as far as mainstream adoption goes) was catalyzed. The CME’s first-mover listing could be that milestone.
nd with legendary CME Chairman Leo Melamed calling Bitcoin a “new asset class,” his company’s high-profile institutional offering of Bitcoin futures may just be enough to trigger an avalanche effect of further BTC futures listings until BTC and ETH futures abound and mainstream society embraces cryptocurrencies as a new asset.
Truly, a domino effect lies ahead. First, there will be Bitcoin futures available to institutional investors. Then inevitably will arrive Bitcoin ETFs.
Cboe Global Markets Inc. president Chris Concannon has already said Cboe’s working on bringing. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to the market:
“With regulated futures of a certain asset class like a bitcoin, you do have an opportunity to introduce ETFs and over time we do envision ETFs coming to market.”
With both BTC futures and ETFs, the rest will be history – at that point, mainstream investors would presumably be comfortable enough to begin investing directly into cyrptocurrencies themselves.