Bitcoin breaks through $8,000. The world's largest futures exchange will start testing Bitcoin futures next week

This article was first published at 04:22 Beijing time, and the Bitcoin market was updated at 09:13.

The world's major exchanges are getting closer to officially trading bitcoin futures, with the dollar price of bitcoin trading close to the record high set a week ago.

On Thursday, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME), also known as CME, announced that it will begin testing bitcoin futures trading from next Monday. Pending regulatory approval, it is expected to officially launch bitcoin futures trading on its Globex electronic trading platform before the end of this year.

CME is the world's largest and oldest futures exchange. After the above plans and forecasts were announced, Bitcoin continued to rise in early Asian trading on Friday. Bitfinex's quotes showed that Bitcoin reached a high of $8,040 during the day, setting a new record high.

In addition, CME's competitor, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the largest options exchange in the United States, is also planning to start trading Bitcoin futures this year or early next year, and recently disclosed the specifications of the relevant trading contracts.

CBOE said that it plans to trade bitcoin futures for more than 22 hours on weekdays (the market will be closed only between 16:15 and 18:00 New York time); the exchange may offer weekly, monthly and quarterly contracts, and traders' net long and net short positions shall not exceed 5,000 contracts.

CME announced last week that it plans to launch Bitcoin futures in the fourth quarter of this year. One hour after the announcement, the Bitcoin price in USD exceeded $6,400, rising by more than $150 in less than an hour. Huobi.com data showed that the Bitcoin price in RMB once reached 40,000 yuan.

Wall Street Journal mentioned at the time that the decision announced by CME was considered by industry insiders to be of great significance. The launch of derivatives by major exchanges gave such investors channels to enter the Bitcoin market.

Earlier this week, CME CEO Terry Duffy said that Bitcoin futures could start trading as early as the second week of December. This means that Bitcoin shorts only need to wait for a month before they can short Bitcoin.

However, considering the sharp fluctuations in Bitcoin trading prices, CME may have to put a "tight rein" on Bitcoin futures.

Wall Street Journal quoted media sources last week as saying that CME plans to set intraday volatility limits for Bitcoin futures to be launched this year. When the intraday trading price rises/falls by 7% and 13% compared with the previous day's closing, trading may be suspended for 2 minutes and then resumed. When the volatility reaches 20%, trading for the whole day may end.

Also last week, on the day when news broke that CME planned to limit volatility in Bitcoin futures, Melamed, founder of the Western Financial Futures Market and honorary chairman of CME, predicted that Bitcoin could become an asset class like gold and stocks.

Melame said, “We will manage” Bitcoin so that it does not grow wildly, “We will tame it and make it a common trading tool with rules.”