Investing.com – Bitcoin rose sharply on Friday to trade near its all-time highs amid growing expectations that Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the CBOE Futures Exchange will be the first traditional exchanges to enter the cryptocurrency market.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, bitcoin rose to $10558, up $650.9, or 6.62% a day after it fell below $9000. The popular digital currency traded just shy of its all-time high of $11,427.2. Bitcoin’s market cap rose to $179.9 billion.
"We are pleased to bring Bitcoin futures to market after working closely with the CFTC and market participants to design a regulated offering that will provide investors with transparency, price discovery, and risk transfer capabilities," said Terry Duffy, CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer on Friday.
The new contract will be listed on and subject to the rules of CME. It will be available for trading on the CME Globex electronic trading platform, and for submission for clearing via CME ClearPort, effective on Sunday, December 17, 2017 for a trade date of December 18.
The recent wave of optimism concerning bitcoin futures has added to investor hopes that bitcoin exchange-traded funds will follow the launch of bitcoin futures, which would cement bitcoin as an established asset class.
Bitcoin cash rose 5.53% to $1,384.80, while bitcoin gold rose 2.55% to $293.81.
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 5.20% to $454.84.