It’s been over a year since the Cboe and CME listed the world’s first bitcoin futures contracts, the first ever bitcoin investment product to hit the legacy market. Both futures went live just before bitcoin peaked at its $20,000 all-time high. Out-the-gate trading for the derivatives reflected 2017’s market mania, and Cboe’s futures alone traded over 800 contracts (roughly $12,000,000 at the time) within the first two hours of their launch.With the creation of these markets, the euphoric anticipation of bitcoin’s debut on Wall Street conjured up delusions of grandeur. The seemingly unstoppable asset, which had transcended all-time high after all-time high with ease all throughout the 2017 holiday season, was on the cusp of receiving its largest flush of capital yet. Cue 2018 and the bear.Now, bitcoin is down about 80 percent from its all-time high. Its introduction into mainstream institutional markets obviously did not send us to a new paradigm, and some in the community even believe that the futures invited the opposite effect — that they were the cause of the crash.2018 was not the year of institutionalization that some bitcoin investors hoped that it would be. Instead, it’s been a Sisyphean struggle to give Wall Street an easier in, perhaps best exemplified by the industry’s repeated trial and failure to get an ETF approved by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).Still, there ...
