Nasdaq has long since focused its attention on cryptocurrencies. One of the projects they are carrying out is the issuance of bitcoin futures and, according to Bloomberg, two unidentified people who are “familiar with the matter“, have reported that the project is continuing despite the collapse in value during the last year.
To tell the truth, there has been no news about this project for months, while instead there has been a lot of talk about other Nasdaq Inc projects related to cryptocurrencies which have shifted the attention away from the bitcoin futures.
However, now it seems that Nasdaq has worked together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to try to satisfy the doubts of the American regulator before launching its futures contracts on bitcoin.
The goal would be to bring them to market in the first quarter of 2019.
In fact, after the release of CME and Cboe futures last December, the CFTC initiated a more thorough review process for the approval of cryptocurrency derivatives.
For example, even Bakkt, which also wants to launch futures on Bitcoin, has had to postpone their release perhaps precisely because of greater difficulty in obtaining approval from the body. Even the particularly long process of approval of bitcoin ETFs by the SEC seems to confirm this new and more stringent approach by the regulators.
Therefore, in theory, three new derivatives could be put on the market in the first months of 2019: Nasdaq’s bitcoin futures, Bakkt’s futures, and the VanEck, SolidX and Cboe ETFs.
All this despite the clear fall in prices of recent weeks, as if the fall had had no impact on the decision to issue these derivatives.
In other words, it seems that the technical development of these assets is continuing without being affected by price developments, even when it comes to new purely financial instruments that could allow a greater number of investors to focus on these assets as well. And it is important that behind these instruments there are giants of traditional finance such as Nasdaq, ICE or Cboe.
