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In the week ending 15 December, 2017, as a broad Bitcoin Update, the start of bitcoin futures trading on the Cboe exchange was off to a flying start, bringing the cryptocurrency into the mainstream investing. ED&F Man Capital Markets, a $14.2 billion brokerage, has signed up 35 hedge funds, family offices and prop trading firms for bitcoin futures and is in talks with at least a half dozen more while big banks have largely held back. However some said trading is restricted by the margin requirement on bitcoin futures which is roughly four times that of many other futures contracts.

Anyone getting exposure to bitcoin should know that about 40% of bitcoin is held by at least 1,000 people. Meanwhile Cameron Winklevoss said that bitcoin could challenge gold's market capitalization in the future and Nassim Nicholas Taleb warned that those hoping to use futures contracts to bet against bitcoin were doomed to lose money. At this point, concerns about cryptocurrency are keeping institutional investors at bay while Interactive Brokers Group has reversed its stance on bitcoin to offer futures trading on CME platform. A Russian hedge fund manager predicted that the initial coin offerings (ICOs) would be "over" in 2018 while John Burbank is reportedly circling cryptocurrencies looking for his next big score.

The fourth largest digital currency by capitalization, litecoin, has risen 7,291% against bitcoin's 1,731%. Coinbase did halt trading of red-hot litecoin and ether after the crypto markets approached $500bn; Salt Lending, Nebeus, CoinLoan and EthLend are offering loans with bitcoin and digital currency as collateral while Bloomberg has added ethereum, litecoin and ripple to its terminal. At the same time, central banks around the world are increasingly recognizing the potential upsides and downsides of d......................

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