Just a few days ago the CME Group, World’s Largest Options Exchange announced that they would be trading in Bitcoin futures by the end of 2017. After this decision Bitcoin has seen a dramatic price increase rising from $5750 on October the 28th, to just over $7000 at present time.

What is this futures announcement that caused such a big buzz in Wall Street and the Bitcoin community? Futures are an important part of main street trading and investing and are reserved for steadier and less volatile assets. A ground-breaking agreement happened where the stage is set to give traders access to Bitcoin through a well regulated market. The decision to include Bitcoin somewhat legitimizes the currency with other fiat currencies.

Wall Street, despite the many differences with Bitcoin, has quite an important role to influencing Bitcoin price increases. The futures announcement created a big hype within the Bitcoin community with the price reaching its all time high from the excitement of this announcement. Trading of Bitcoin futures on regulated markets, make it very likely that a Bitcoin exchange (ETF) could be a future possibility.

However, it is important to remember that Bitcoin is still in its very early stages when it comes to mainstream trading. ETF’s would really help the cryptocurrency and open things up, but there is a long way off for Bitcoin still. Kathleen Moriarty, partner at the law firm who helped develop the first ETF says the SEC is still waiting for more stability and less volatility on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies before a full crypto ETF is approved.

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