Ether futures might be a bad thing for the crypto, and a good thing for its biggest rival

Tom
Lee

Bloomberg
TV

• Ether futures might soon come online at the Cboe Global
  Markets, the Chicago exchange operator. 
• Bitcoin bull Tom Lee tells Business Insider that might
  be a bad thing for ether, but a good thing for
  bitcoin. 

Cboe is telling its trading firm clients that it is getting close
to launching a market for ether futures, but that might actually
be a bad thing for the cryptocurrency, one expert says. 

Tom Lee, the notorious bitcoin bull who has a $25,000 price
target for the coin, told Business Insider that ether futures
could hurt ether and actually benefit its larger rival,
bitcoin. 

That’s because the launch of ether futures would provide an easy
way for ether bears to bet against the coin.

Futures, which give investors a way to bet on the future
price of an asset, helped
propel bitcoin to all-time highs at the end of
December. But after they came online, the
price of bitcoin tanked and it’s down more than 70% since hitting
an all-time high at the end of 2017. Ether futures could have a
similar impact on the crypto’s price, according to Lee. 

On the flip side, Lee said ether futures could benefit bitcoin
because they’ll provide crypto bears with another way to express
their view on the overall market, alleviating pressure on bitcoin
shorts. 

“Since December of this year, if one was bearish on
any aspect of crypto but did not want to own the underlying, they
could short btc,” Lee said. “They can now short eth, means
the net short on btc in futures would fall.”

Cboe would be basing its futures on Gemini’s underlying market,
people familiar with the situation said. Cboe also based its
bitcoin futures on the New York-based crypto exchange run by the
Winklevoss twins.

The futures and options exchange is waiting on the Commodities
Futures Trading Commission to get comfortable with the product
before its official launch, a person with knowledge of the matter
said.

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