Billionaire investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban has said that the approval of the bitcoin futures on major exchanges will be ‘generally positive’ for the digital currency.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) have both received approval from the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to list bitcoin futures contracts on its trading platform.
CBOE is expected to start trading bitcoin futures on the 10th December, whereas, CME is to begin its trading on the 18th.
It is because of this that Cuban believes it will be a positive step for bitcoin and where it’s heading, reports Bloomberg.
“It will be interesting. I think it’s generally positive,” he said. “What they charge is critical. Transaction costs are relatively high for BTC. If this pushes transaction costs lower, it will be a benefit to the BTC market.”
The CME Group contract will be cash-settled, based on the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR), which serves as a once-a-day reference rate of the U.S. dollar price of bitcoin. It uses prices from exchanges Kraken, GDAX, Bitstamp, and itBit. CBOE will also be cash settled and based on the Gemini exchange.
Yet, despite Mark Cuban’s apparent good feelings toward bitcoin he hasn’t always been so positive toward it. Back in June, he took to social media to claim that the cryptocurrency was ‘a bubble.’ At the time, he tweeted:
“I think it’s in a bubble. I just don’t know when or how much it corrects. When everyone is bragging about how easy they are making $=bubble.”
Interestingly, shortly after that, Cuban was reported as saying that he was planning to invest in a digital coin, stating that he ‘wanted to learn more about them.’
Since then, however, it appears that Cuban has done his homework on the digital currency, fully believing in the potential that the market holds.
Another big believer in the crypto market is venture capital investor Tim Draper. As a long time advocate of digital currencies, he’s of the opinion that in five years time they will eventually replace fiat currencies. This is a feeling that is being mimicked by William Mook, an entrepreneur who tracks bitcoin and price markets.
In a recent report from Russia Today, Mook stated that bitcoin is a store of value that will replace fiat currencies as each of them ‘fail.’ He added that as bitcoin gains in value and gets stronger, trust in third-party systems will decline, adding:
“It will do this because it secures honesty and value using the blockchain, without reference to trusted third parties. It is happening today.”
All of this comes at a time when bitcoin is experiencing a surge in value. At the time of publishing, it’s trading in excess of $11,800, according to CoinMarketCap.