What is Bitcoin Future?

Within a futures market, an investor is able to trade futures contracts, which involves the purchase of an asset class at a particular price with a settlement date set at some point in the future.

The underlying value of the futures contract for a particular instrument is then priced according to the actual asset itself, whether gold, crude, an index or individual stock.

Futures markets have been prevalent in the financial markets for many years, with the first modern era futures market reported to have been the Dojima Rice Exchange, launched in Japan in 1710. Some suggest that the London Metal Exchange that was founded in the 19th century traces back to the 16th century and that’s before considering 1750 BC’s Code of Hammurabi that allowed the sales of goods and assets to be delivered for an agreed price at a future date.

Futures contracts contain the details of the asset class in question together with the purchase size, final trading day, maturity date and exchange on which the contract is being bought or sold. Futures contracts are created based on demand and do not get automatically created in the marketplace, involving two parties, where one party is going long on an asset class, while the other goes short.

Upon expiry of a futures contract, the settlement is either physical, in the case of commodities, or via a cash settlement in the case of Bitcoin, though the futures contracts are likely to change hands on numerous occasions before expiry. It is important to note that the futures market is used by investors looking to hedge exposures to a particular instrument or by speculators, neither of whom are actually looking for physical delivery that is akin to the spot /cash markets.

As investors have become more knowledgeable about the markets and the influences on asset classes, the futures markets have become a guide for investors on the likely direction of commodities, stocks and indexes on a given day, with crude oil futures, gold futures and the the Dow Jones reflecting investor sentiment towards the respective instruments and the direction based on the flow of information that influences supply and demand dynamics.

For investors looking to hedge, there will already be some form of an exposure to the spot or physical and the futures markets allow the company or investor to protect the upside or downside with a futures contract. As an example, airlines are well known to protect themselves against significant rises in crude oil prices, by buying a futures contract today with a specified price and delivery date in the future, on the assumption that oil prices will be on the rise over the period in question. In this case, the airline is exposed to the cost fluctuations of crude oil as a physical but is looking to protect itself in the futures market. If crude rises in value by $20 per barrel over the year and the airline has a futures contract at $5 per barrel above the current price, the impact on earnings is significantly less than without the execution of the futures contract. In this example, the airline would be taking a long position, while the party obligated to deliver the crude oil will be taking a short position, as they are the seller, while the airline is the buyer. An airline is unlikely to take a short position in crude oil, as declining prices benefit the bottom line.