‘Futures’ looks bright for Bitcoin

BITCOIN FUTURES jumped more than 20% in their eagerly anticipated U.S. debut, which backers hope will encourage wider use and legitimacy for the world’s largest cryptocurrency even as critics warn of the risk of a bubble and price collapse. The launch on Sunday night may have caused an early outage of the Chicagobased CBOE Global Markets’ website. The exchange said that due to heavy traffic, the site “may be temporarily unavailable.” The one-month bitcoin contract opened trade at 6 p.m. at $15,460, dipped briefly and then rose to a high of $18,700. Experts had worried that the risks associated with the currency’s Wild West-like nature could overshadow the futures debut, but so far the price action has been unlike the wild swings seen in the past few weeks. Bitcoin tumbled 20% in 10 hours on Friday.