The Securities and Exchange Commission sees the bitcoin market as threatened with manipulation, if it isn’t already. The repercussions of their view could affect cryptocurrencies for years to come if the door is closed on billions of institutional dollars piling into crypto. For a second time, the SEC shot down a bid by the Bats BZX Exchange and the Winkelvi-backed Gemini Exchange to launch a bitcoin-based ETF, which was first submitted to the securities regulators a couple of years ago. The proposed ETF was one of several that have been trying to get the blessing of the SEC. While headlines focused on the Winklevoss brothers getting rejected by the SEC…
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This is the closest approximation we could get to retail investors trading bitcoin futures (via Shutterstock).Dumb money keeps buying bitcoins from smart money, data comfirm
Big financial institutions and money managers continue a bearish position in the cryptocurrency’s futures contracts
“Smart money” continues to sell bitcoin to “dumb money”, according to the latest data compiled in the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Commitment of Traders report. Big financial institutions and money managers—with vast research and resources at their disposal—continue to hold positions in the cryptocurrency that will profit should bitcoin prices fall. They have been positioned that way since bitcoin contracts began trading more than three months ago. These institutions are net short some 1,833 contracts of bitcoin futures worth about $20 million on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) as of February 27, 2018. A futures contract is an obligation for the “short” (the seller) to deliver on a…