Bitcoin Blasts Off Above $6,600 – Only $493,400 To Go…

I hope you own yourself some Bitcoin or, as we’re fond of calling it, “make-believe space tokens”, because it’s comin’ in hot this morning.

In yet another truly absurd leg higher, the cryptocurrency that sane people love to hate is up above a laughable $6,600 on Wednesday and it looks like it wants to go higher still.

This of course comes on the heels of yesterday’s news that CME is about to launch futures for this piece of made-up shit. Here’s BBG’s Camila Russo:

This paves the way for more institutional investors to enter the space. It could open the floodgates to investors who have been standing on the sidelines as bitcoin soared over 500% this year. The CME had prepared for this by starting a bitcoin index last year, and the futures will be settled in cash based on that index. The CBOE said in August it’s also planning to launch bitcoin derivatives and the CFTC registered cryptocurrency trading platform LedgerX as the first federally regulated cryptocurrency derivatives exchange and clearinghouse. With bitcoin futures becoming mainstream, the next logical step seems to be a bitcoin ETF, as the SEC had cited the lack of derivatives as one of the reasons for rejecting approval of the funds. ETFs and derivatives are likely to make bitcoin trading a lot more palatable for hedge funds and mutual funds, as the instruments will allow them to hedge for the digital asset’s volatility and avoid some of the hassles of investing in bitcoin directly.

As of this morning, Bitcoin’s “market cap” is now at a comical $110 billion.

MarketCap

Not too much further now. Only $493,400 to go before John doesn’t have to pull a Steve Bannon on live television:

Dcik

As DealBreaker’s Owen Davis notes, now that everyone is invited to the party, this could continue for the foreseeable future:

Suffice to say there’s a mass of silently suffering hedgies out there yearning for nothing more than a few measly bps of their firms’ portfolios to be devoted to bitcoin. But one obstacle more than any has made it such a tough sell. Beyond the obvious quibbles – that bitcoin is almostuniversally shunned by banks, near-synonymous with bubble, reminiscent of a pyramid scheme, and pervaded by reminiscent of a pyramid scheme and manipulation – the only real drawback has been that unless you’re cool with shady exchanges domiciled in weird Balkan states you’ve never heard of, bitcoin couldn’t be reliably hedged. Until now.