Thursday, February 23, 2023

Futures trading in Crypto

 Original post June 3 2022



If you havent bought or sold any cryptocurrency then you likely dont know that long and shorts are available on many platforms on coins. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission Thursday bought a suit against the crypto company owned by the billionaire Winklevoss brothers, saying it misled regulators as an effort to gain approval for bitcoin futures in 2017.

 

What I find interesting about this suit allegations is a few things.

 

  • They brought it almost 5 years later
  • They approved the platform for doing what they are doing with trading
  • They didnt understand the mechanics of what they were approving
  • They thought all trades were pre funded but found later they werent as Gemini allowed borrow
  • Traders were able to trade with themselves to manipulate the market price

With all of the talk of tracking capabilities of on chain transactions when you have centralized wallets that hold all trades its easy to see how even regulators cant track trades.

 

Here is the original announcement where Gemini confirms they are regulated via CFTC

https://www.gemini.com/blog/cboe-and-gemini-to-launch-first-ever-bitcoin-futures-contract-ticker-xbt