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You’ll soon be able to bet on Bitcoin’s future value on NASDAQ

Jon Martindale
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Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS/Getty Images
A smart (or lucky) few predicted that the Bitcoin cryptocurrency’s value would rise to the heady heights it has hit at the end of 2017, but if you think it will go far further, or go down, you may be interested in the NASDAQ stock exchange’s upcoming futures contracts. They will effectively allow anyone to bet on the future of the Bitcoin currency.

At the start of 2017 a single Bitcoin was hovering around the $1,000 mark per coin. At the time of writing it’s just north of $10,000 on the back of a recent surge and a general upswing throughout the year. Some now predict that in the years to come we’ll see that figure expand even more and NASDAQ is now looking to profit from it by enabling investors to take positions on its future value.

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The NASDAQ exchange now joins the likes of Chicago’s CME Group, which claimed earlier this month that it too would soon introduce futures contracts for Bitcoin, as per The Verge. This should see an even greater interest in the currency, but also a more weighted stake in its rise and fall. As The Verge points out, derivatives of that sort focused on mortgages led to the financial crash in 2008.

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That has some cautious about Bitcoin’s immediate future. Suggesting that initial coin offerings (ICOs) of new cryptocurrencies, often funded by Bitcoin, were a major driver of its value increase in 2017, financial analyst Josh Brown claims that we could be heading for a cryptocurrency crash. Not that that will stall Bitcoin and its fellow currencies forever, but it may mean a bursting of the cryptocurrency bubble is necessary to really see the currency’s true potential.

Whatever you think the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is though, with the introduction of futures contracts at various financial institutions, you’ll soon be able to bet on the outcome. NASDAQ’s own implementation is slated to begin in the new year.

If you’re just learning about Bitcoin and are interested in investing or using the cryptocurrency yourself, it’s important that you learn as much about it as possible first. Here is our guide to everything you need to know about Bitcoin, and another on how to buy your first Bitcoin.

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