Bitcoin [BTC] futures markets are not the reason for its price to peak, says Tone Vays

On 28th August 2018, Tone Vays a derivatives trader, analyst and content creator was interviewed by Max Keiser on an episode of the Keiser Report. They discussed a wide range of topics which included the futures markets and institutional money entering the cryptocurrency market.

According to Max Keiser, there was a reduction in BTC prices as soon as the Bitcoin futures were launched. Tone was asked if he had seen any connection between both the events, for which he replied, the future launch themselves did not result in the Bitcoin prices to drop. People had become too optimistic before the launch of the futures which caused the prices to increase way more than expected, he said:

“Its one of those classic buy the rumor sell the news and in this case, it’s more like buy the expected event but then once the event happened people realized that it wasn’t going to have that much of an effect”

Tone says that the volume in Bitcoin futures was not very high as it was still a very niche market. Bitcoin futures do not have an actual Bitcoin settlement which can be seen in other futures like gold or oil.

In the course of talking about Bitcoin settlements, Tone was asked about Baakt, a new venture which will offer a federally regulated market for Bitcoin. With the creation of Bakkt, ICE aims to transform Bitcoin into a trusted global currency with broad usage. He stated that it would be a very interesting product but the regulators have not given Bakkt full permission and it would take them more than a year for its approval.

Once we have futures which have deliverable underlying assets then things would get more interesting. However, according to him, Bitcoin still gets its actual price from underlying exchanges and not from the futures space. Tone stated:

“the futures is just a way for people to bet and the speculation of what those companies will do I’m very curious in five years from now where is the price discovery of Bitcoin is it the future space or is it still these underlying exchanges”