Investors Come Back for Bitcoin: Financial Times

Bitcoin’s excellent performance in 2019 has attracted investors from banks and asset managers once again, despite past worries about the currency’s reputational risk, lack of regulation, and volatile returns. In 2017, bitcoin went above US$20,000, prompting Wall Street banks to rush and develop their own digital currencies with blockchain technology. CME Group launched the first futures on a bitcoin index in December 2017, allowing investors to short bitcoin. Bitcoin’s price crashed in the following year, dashing prospects for many. Now bitcoin regains market attention with its new bullish performance, approaching $10,000 in value. The Chinese government’s digital currency plan could emerge as a strong competitor to the US dollar in the global market. Large trading firms are piling in, shifting the trading pattern from identifying price discrepancies to supplying prices to exchanges and profiting from the spread between bids and offers. Investors are gradually coming to regard cryptocurrencies as mainstream investments and expect the cryptocurrency trading business to remain profitable in the short term. – YaleGlobal