Bitcoin (BTC) Futures were released in December last year and the result was that the market responded very well with the King of Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin) peaking at $20,000 in some exchanges on Sunday, December 17th when they appeared as on option on CME Group Inc’s trading platform. The American company is known to offer options and futures in the exchanges of Chicago, New York City and London.
Prior to CME Group Inc launching the contracts on the 17th, Cboe Global Markets had launched a similar product only 7 days earlier on the 10th of December. It was a fanfare of exciting news centered around Bitcoin that month. This can easily explain why the coin peaked at $20,000.
News reaching the Ripple (XRP) community is that Ripple Futures have been active and trading for almost 18 months now without the Crypto-verse’s intimate knowledge. A U.K based startup company, Crypto facilities, has been the sole trading entity offering Ripple futures albeit in one of the most classic case of doing so under the radar.
Crypto Facilities managed to raise $1.5 Million in seed capital back in September 2016 for its startup. They did all the proper due diligence and aquired the necessary license from the U.K’s Financial Conduct Authority. Crypto Facilities went ahead and added cruptocurrencies and other products on their site. Besides trading in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ripple (XRP) the site offers Indices, the mentioned Futures and Turbo options.
An Index is a measure of the performance of the market by grouping a bunch of stocks, or in this case cryptocurrencies, doing the necessary weighted ‘averages’ of the cryptocurrencies in the index and offering it to the masses. Index trading involves trading of the group of stocks or crypto which make up the index. Futures on the other hand are financial contracts obligating the buyer to purchase an asset or the seller to sell an asset, such as a physical commodity, financial instrument or in this case a cryptocurrency, at a predetermined future date and price. Turbo Options on the other hand, are a short-term type of trading in binary options. The said binary options are financial options in which the payoff is either a fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. It is an all of nothing type of trading similar to Las Vegas gambling.
With such a background and the continual momentum of Ripple payment settlement technologies in terms of being tested or partnering with major banks and money remitting services, it is only a matter of time before the same CME Group Inc or Cboe Global Markets start offering Ripple Futures.
Earlier in the year, Wallstreet had been rumoured to be pushing for a Ripple IPO. This was based on the notion that the management of the Ripple project were doing all the right things and steering the project in the right direction. Also to mention are the well tested payment solution products of xVia, xCurrent and xRapid that guarantee that transactions are secure on the blockchain, fast (3.3 seconds) and cheap ($0.0004 per transaction). It is no wonder there is an announcement on a brand new partnership everyday and the eagerness by Wallstreet to get in on the action.
One can only hope that once Ripple (XRP) futures start being offered in the market, that the price of the coin will not follow the drastic downfall of Bitcoin (BTC) as soon as its futures were offered. There were discussions on the web claiming that anything Wallstreet touches is doomed to dip for they only want to profit from a good cryptocurrency or stock. Such theories were accompanied by the comparisons of Bitcoin’s price before the futures ($20,000), and the lowest price this year of $6,174 on February 6th this year.
It is a bit unfair to blame Wallstreet and the BTC Futures for the rapid decline in value of the coin. There was plenty of FUD during this time period. There was the constant news from South Korea and China about regulation and banning of ICOs and trading. There was also a bunch of hacks on exchanges.
We can only cross our fingers and hope that once the Ripple Futures are offered by the top trading companies, that the price will move in the upward direction rather than crashing to a value that no one wants to mention .
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