I don't like futures for Bitcoin or Ethereum. Because they integrate the current economic system with blockchain. More precisely, they transfer the bad aspects of the current economy to the blockchain economy. Bitcoin is limited. So it is valuable.
NOT like any of us can really do anything about the existence or NON-existence of such products. Right? Good to be aware of these kinds of products to the extent that they might be used to affect, control or manipulate price... or attempted to be used for such.
Actually there is, we can choose to not participate in the dilution of the asset class.
We can also educate those that ask this same question why these unsettled "liquidity supplying, volatility squashing" markets should not be supported but rather the asset itself purchased and held.
Every coin being rolled over in house in these clearing houses is one less actually being bought on chain and that is a direct dilution of the cap.
Think of if no-one had herded to Walmart as was forewarned by so many of us..
If you want institutional money, if you want big traders money for Bitcoin you can't avoid derivatives...
Moreover futures can be very useful for all the miners, they are able to sell at fixed prices several weeks or months before getting their bitcoins.
And don't forget that most of futures exchanges only accept bitcoins. So you need to buy "real" bitcoins before trading on them.
Miners and traders are now day very happy with their bitcoin because day by day bitcoin is increasing the value and it's being good for trading after holding of specific time periods. Trading right now is not good as the market is under recovery but I think with little patience I will be able to get my target profit just need to be patient.
What does that mean? Yeah of course, btc prices go up and they go down, and if they go up too quickly, then there is likely to be a decent sized correction, but how the fuck does anyone know how far to take profits. Yeah, you can play a bit here or there to hedge, but you, Faxmate, seem to be suggesting that you are planning on making some BIG play in the near future to either sell a large portion of your BTC or to short... and seems very risky to me, unless you are just playing with a small amount of your stash.
I will personally concede that I feel a decent level of froth in the whole damned space, and it really does not have to do with futures, as far as I can tell, but of course, futures players remain one of the factors that must be considered. My worry remains the ongoing pumpening of some of the obvious crap such as the various alt coins. So yeah, even though the vast majority of them are merely riding off of the coat tails of bitcoin, they just seem to be too eager to pump in ways that just signal (at least from my perspective) needs for correction. I am not as worried about bitcoin's ability to sustain a decent pump, even beyond the $13,880 top from June 27, 2019... So yeah, there seems to be kind of a need to monitor some of the phony baloney that is taking place on the sidelines, too.. and some of the financial instruments seem to be eying ways to add some of those frothy coins into their options whether referring to their price or sometimes using some phony coin like ethereum as collateral... which seems dangerous as fuck, given their all over the place code base.. and even uncertainties in terms of transitioning its code base... People who play with futures, must be attempting to account for dynamics in the whole space, even if their instruments are utilizing bitcoins more and using bitcoin prices as referents.