CBOE announced on Thursday that it does not plan to continue listing Bitcoin futures contracts for now until further notice. No timeline has been given for the temporary ban.
Cboe released a statement on Thursday announcing that it would no longer list Bitcoin futures on its platform as of June this year. However, it did not fully shut the door on Bitcoin futures, and this means that the ban is temporary. The statement pointed out that the Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) is simply just re-evaluating its strategy.
There was no statement indicating a future timeline for which the company will bring back Bitcoin futures on its platform. The exchange has also not revealed any reasons behind its decision to pull Bitcoin futures from its platform but there is speculation that it is due to too much competition.
“CFE is not adding a Cboe Bitcoin (USD) (“XBT”) futures contract for trading in March 2019,” stated Cboe in the press release.
Cboe will continue to allow investors to continue trading the XBT futures that are still traded on the platform until they expire on June 19 this year. Bitcoin futures have not performed as well as expected despite the hype around them in the industry. They have particularly been slow to take off at Cboe which has had lower trading volume than CME Group which happens to be one of its rivals.
The announcement is discouraging news for the cryptocurrency market
The announcement marks yet another negative news for the cryptocurrency market which kicked off 2018 on a rather bad note with a massive bull market after 2017’s epic performance. Its price continued to drop in 2018 and the situation has not gotten any better. In any case, it also looks like investors have been shying off from the crypto market.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has been trading at significantly lower than its potential, particularly in the $3,000. The price of the cryptocurrency was $3,963 at the time of this press. The Cboe Exchange introduced Bitcoin Futures on its trading platform on December 10, 2017, when Bitcoin’s price was doing exceptionally well. CME Group also introduced Bitcoin futures eight days later, but its offering seems to be currently doing better than Cboe.
