Summary:

  • Bitcoin’s options are to be available this autumn
  • BofA indicates a major hurdle for Bitcoin (BTCUSD on xStation5) to become an established world currency
  • BTC could get back towards a more important support placed at around $2390

We could already say that derivatives related to Bitcoin will likely be available as soon as this fall as the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) gave approval to LedgerX, a cryptocurrency trading platform operator, to work as a federally-regulated exchange and clearing house for derivatives contracts settling in digital currencies.

In effect, the New York-based company plans to offer one to six month bitcoin-to-dollars options contracts in late September to early October, LedgerX Chief Executive Officer Paul Chou said in a telephone interview. Contracts for other digital currencies including for Ethereum’s ether are expected to follow. LedgerX’s CEO said “we want to keep it (options) to a certain size in the beginning before we scale up over the next couple of months”.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch decided to compare digital currencies’ growth to that seen in gold, silver and even salt in ancient times. The bank said in its sweeping report that a major obstacle for Bitcoin is whether major financial institutions will accept the digital currency as collateral. BofA’s Blanch, who is considered by many to be one of the best commodity analysts on Wall Street, added they were not cognizant of any major institution that takes cryptocurrency as collateral at the moment. He laid out three main criteria that Bitcoin must meet in order to become a reserve currency of the world: safety, liquidity and return.

link do file download linkRisk gauged by the 3M-rolling annualized standard deviation suggests Bitcoin remains risky compared with gold or silver, risk has worn off to some extent though. Source: CNBC

With regard to liquidity, reflected by the amount of trading, is still far greater in stocks, fixed income and traditional currencies. But “it is hard to ignore that trading volumes for major digital currencies like bitcoin and Ethereum (ETHUSD) have skyrocketed in recent years,” Blanch said.

Last but not least, return has soared of late as Bitcoin has more than doubled its value since the beginning of the year, while its major rival Ethereum has surged several thousand percent. Nonetheless, BofA noted the gains in Bitcoin’s price are due partly to the increasing difficulty of mining, or generating, new Bitcoins and it could change going forward.

link do file download linkBitcoin has failed to break out of its record peak which has been marked so far. As a result, a bearish candlestick has been drawn, thus it could bring the price down towards the more important support placed at around $2390 which is underpinned by a 50% retracement of a recent upward move. Source: xStation5