Bitcoin futures top US$18,000 on debut on CBOE as price surges trigger series of trading halts
CBOE website goes down briefly at the start of trade in the virtual currency futures contract
Bitcoin futures surged more than 20 per cent to above US$18,000 as they launched on the CBOE futures exchange on Monday, with huge leaps in price triggering several brief suspensions of trading.
Prices for contracts expiring in January for the virtual currency briefly jumped to US$18,850 on the Chicago exchange, up 26 per cent from their opening level of US$15,000. By 6pm, they were priced at US$18,000.
Trading volume was 2,722 January contracts, 12 for February futures and 47 for March contracts.
Separately, bitcoin prices traded at US$16,586, up 10 per cent from the previous session, according to an index by specialist virtual currency news site CoinDesk that tracks prices from exchanges such as Bitstamp, Coinbase and Bitfinex.
As trading started at 7am Hong Kong time on Monday, CBOE’s website went down briefly.
“Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to cboe.com may find it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable,” the exchange said in a statement earlier in the day.