The second US bitcoin futures launch is seen as another step towards big institutional investors warming up to a volatile asset that had until recently been accessible only via largely unregulated markets. Bitcoin exchanges and digital currency wallets meanwhile have struggled with issues like outages, denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and hacks. The decline in bitcoin futures volume had been expected, analysts said, given concerns about the cryptocurrency's underlying volatility. And discount brokerage TD Ameritrade said on Friday it would allow certain clients to trade Cboe bitcoin futures this week, pointing to a potential pickup. The futures contract price has declined more than 5% since its launch on Dec 10.

Source: Bangkok Post December 17, 2017 20:48 UTC