In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, Central Banks began cornering the sovereign bond market via Zero or even Negative interest rates and Quantitative Easing (QE) programs.
The goal here was to reflate the financial system by pushing the “risk free rate” to extraordinary lows. By doing this, Central Bankers were hoping to:
1) Backstop the financial system (sovereign bonds are the bedrock for all risk).
Despite broadly-spewed sentiment last week that Bitcoin futures would herald the end of Bitcoin as 'shorts' could finally capitalize on the 'tulipmania', for now, they have failed to turn up as the January-expiring futures are holding a 8% premium to spot prices and remain up around 19% from their opening print overnight.
Futures are holding around a $1000-$1300 premium to spot for the last few hours - implying quite a serious 'term structure' for Bitcoin credit.
U.S. equity index futures pointed to early gains and fresh record highs, following Asian markets higher, as European shares were mixed and oil was little changed, although it is unclear if anyone noticed with bitcoin stealing the spotlight, after futures of the cryptocurrency began trading on Cboe Global Markets.
Submitted by Rajan Dhall MSTA and Shant Movsesian from fxdailyterminal.com
The gradual acceptance of digital currencies, with major exchanges about to launch bitcoin futures trading, may prompt some oil producing nations to ditch the US dollar in crude trade in favor of cryptocurrencies, an oil analyst says.
As RT reports, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have more than one thing in common.
All three are major oil producing nations dependent on the dollar since the global crude market is traditionally dominated by contracts denominated in US currency.