The thousand dollar bitcoin climb continued Wednesday as the crypto moved over $12,000 with its own $1,000+ trading move.

On Thanksgiving Day the conversation around the table was most people asking what bitcoin was and how do you get involved. The price was around $8,600 and that feels like it was a few days ago.

I have to believe the CME move to begin BTC Futures later this month is bringing institutional trading firms into the fold, although many will not admit to entering the fold.

I can see these financial firms being the engine behind the price gaps over the last month as bitcoin moved from $7,000 to $12,700 today (see my updated chart below). I can also see these firms being the ones lending out the crypto in order for the CME to allow shorting of the crypto.

With only 16.7 million bitcoin floating in the marketplace at the most, getting ample inventory to operate a futures market will be difficult in terms of liquidity.

While most YouTube bitcoin “analysts” don’t have a sense of what a futures market entails for bitcoin, the CME has the liquidity to back losses for sometime. They will have a price impact along with Nasdaq when it enters the marketplace in early 2018.

I will assume the price gaps will slow appreciably once futures begin trading earnestly in January.

Here are the historical price jumps:

Milestone Date Bitcoin High Days $1,000 11/28/2013 $1,106.54 1,230 $2,000 5/20/2017 $2,061.88 1,269 $3,000 6/11/2017 $3,025.47 22 $4,000 8/12/2017 $4,009.89 62 $5,000 9/2/2017 $5,013.91 21 $6,000 10/20/2017 $6,064.14 48 $7,000 11/2/2017 $7,355.35 13 $8,000 11/19/2017 $8,101.91 17 $9,000 $10,000 $11,000 $12,000 $13,000 $14,000 11/26/2017 11/28/17 11/29/17 12/6/17 12/6/17 12/6/17 $9,484.91 10,831.05 11,040.20 12,795.20 13,017.96 14,585.26 7 2 1 6 0.4 0.4