E*Trade to roll out Bitcoin futures
E*Trade will soon let customers buy and sell Bitcoin futures via the CBOE product.
At the moment, the CBOE appears to be winning the battle for volume with 3612 contracts traded today compared to 647 at the CME.
Those volumes are low but could rise once retail is able to participate.
The problem is, it's going to be very tough for retail investors to get involved because margins are so high. E*Trade will set its margin for long positions at the CBOE (which is long 1 Bitcoin) at $40,000. Which even if Bitcoin went to $0 would leave you with $24,000.
And to be short one Bitcoin, you will need to have five times that, or $200,000 in margin as the company aims to protect itself from a squeeze.
Ultimately, retail is much more likely to gravitate to exchanges, CFDs or some other dark part of the web.
