Bitcoin futures rise as virtual currency hits major exchange

Associated Press

CHICAGO

The first bitcoin future began trading Sunday as the increasingly popular virtual currency made its debut on a major U.S. exchange.

The futures contract that expires in January rose $340 to $15,800 in the first hour and 15 minutes of trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The contract opened at $15,460 and was trading at $18,010 as of 10:15 p.m., according to data from the CBOE.

The CBOE futures don’t involve actual bitcoin. They’re securities that will track the price of bitcoin on Gemini, one of the larger bitcoin exchanges.

The start of trading at 6 p.m. overwhelmed the CBOE website. “Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable,” the exchange said in a statement. It said the trading in the futures had not been disrupted.

Another large futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will start trading its own futures next Monday but will use a composite of several bitcoin prices across a handful of exchanges.

The price of a bitcoin has soared since beginning the year below $1,000, hitting a peak of more than $16,858 Dec. 7 on the bitcoin exchange Coindesk. As of 10:10 p.m., it was at $16,405.76 on Coindesk.

Futures are a type of contract in which a buyer and a seller agree on a price for a particular item to be delivered on a certain date in the future.