CNBC analyst Jim Cramer<\/a> recently said investors are better off visiting Las Vegas than gambling on bitcoin, but the example above presents a strong win that almost any visitor to the Strip would gladly take home.<\/p>\nBitcoin Accreditation\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n Bitcoin has attracted attention all the way from mom-and-pop investors up to large Wall Street trading firms. The merits of owning the intangible currency depends on one’s opinion, but this week, bitcoin did receive some sense of legitimacy after the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) began offering futures.<\/p>\n
Futures contracts are legal agreements where investors agree to buy or sell something at a later date at a predetermined price. It’s a speculative investment strategy that provides avenues to predict where the valuation of a company, or in this case currency, is heading.<\/strong><\/p>\nCBOE’s bitcoin futures contracts are currently offering three 2018 dates. They are January 17, February 14, and March 14. The dates’ respective trading prices are going for $18,120, $18,390, and $18,500 as of this writing.<\/p>\n
Buyers are betting that bitcoin will only continue to rise. Should bitcoin hit $20,000 on January 17, for example, CBOE contract holders turn one bitcoin into an $1,880 profit. But as everyone who’s monitored the cryptocurrency knows, the price could just as easily go in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n
Currency Acceptance<\/b><\/h2>\n Bitcoin is difficult, if not impossible, to track back to who is using it, due to the currency’s blockchain ledger. That hasn’t stopped some governments from trying to crack down on its use.<\/p>\n
China believes bitcoin is being used for illicit purposes and to that end, the People’s Republic recently forced numerous cryptocurrency exchanges to close.\u00a0South Korea is also trying to forbid bitcoin and other digital currencies. The country’s Financial Services Commission Vice Chairman Kim Yongbeom opined recently that the trading of bitcoin is “quite like a Ponzi scheme.”<\/strong><\/p>\nJapan and the US are taking a different approach. In April, the Asian nation became one of the first major countries to officially legalize bitcoin<\/a>. And\u00a0this fall, the US Treasury recognized bitcoin as a “convertible decentralized virtual currency.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In one of the craziest days for cybercurrency trading in history, the price of a single bitcoin jumped from $16,700 to $16,748 in a matter of seconds on Monday. The decentralized digital currency has been fluctuating wildly over the last 12 months, with each single bitcoin worth over 2,000 percent more today than it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":65113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,10,19,20],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Bitcoin Gamblers See Earnings Grow, Digital Currency Jumps on Futures<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n