If you'd like to go beyond the knee-jerk reaction:
Bitcoin Futures Tumble As Spot-Arbitrage Collapses | Zero Hedge
The
true bubble is in
Bitcoin futures — a financial shennanigan of the highest order. A derivatives market that's not tied to Bitcoin! It deserves to fail and it's going down.
If you look into it, the futures market expects to stabilize, and the big holders are moving from the miners in China, to the 'Mrs. Watanabe' traders in Japan.
Quote:
As for ground zero - Japan - nobody appears worried:
Supply seems to come from Chinese bitcoin miners and a few early holders. “People who’ve owned them for a long time and have made a fortune. They have ¥10bn and they’re selling a little,” he said. Trading on bitFlyer is roughly 25% in actual bitcoin and 75% in derivatives, where customers make leveraged sidebets with each other on the bitcoin price. “We don’t take any risk. The trading is between our customers,” Mr Kano said. Arbitrageurs link the derivatives market to trading in underlying bitcoin.
Perhaps they have good reason for this: BitFlyer automatically closes client positions when they lose half their initial margin. For example, a customer who used ¥10,000 to buy ¥150,000 of bitcoin would be forced to sell if its value fell to ¥145,000, a drop of slightly more than 3 per cent, something futures traders in the US will find out soon enough.
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So this 'bubble' thing might be like putting a pin-prick in a Zepplin. Maybe they arbitrage with real Bitcoin, I still don't like derivatives. Money for nuttin' and the chicks are free.