Bitcoin mania takes hold in futures debut

CHICAGO — Bitcoin’s debut on a major U.S. exchange is a hit so far, with the price of the firstever futures contract for the virtual currency rising 16 percent.

The futures contract that expires in January was up $2,440 to $17,900 Monday afternoon on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Trading began Sunday, and the price rose as high as $18,850, according to data from the CBOE.

The CBOE futures don’t involve actual bitcoin. They allow investors to make bets on the future direction of bitcoin.

The first session of futures trading fit right in with the frenzy surrounding bitcoin. Traffic to the CBOE website was so heavy right after the start of trading that the site experienced outages. The exchange also halted trading twice Sunday to stem volatility. The exchange operator has rules in place to stop trading after price swings of 10 percent.

Another large futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will start trading its own futures Dec. 18 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 5 p.m. EST, it was trading at about $17,100 on CoinDesk.

How much actual investor interest there will be in these bitcoin futures is still up in the air. Many larger Wall Street brokerages and clearinghouses, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, are either not allowing customers to trade them or only allowing select clients to do so.