United States-regulated LedgerX has launched a call option for bullish Bitcoin investors who think the price of the digital currency will surpass $100,000 by December 2020.
According to a July 17 Bloomberg report, any investor - retail or institutional - can put the call option on the price of the original cryptocurrency. Should bitcoin hit the option's target price, it will mark a 10-fold increase from the current market price, making it a digital currency with a $2 trillion market cap.
The company introduced the new derivative amid demand by its institutional customers with assets between $10 million and $1 billion.
“Dozens and dozens of these institutions got back to us saying we’d be interested in [a] trading contract like this,” Paul Chou, chief executive of LedgerX, told Bloomberg.
“I understand $100,000 is a large number, but a lot of us who’ve been in the space remember bitcoin at $1, and then it hit $10 and $100 and $10,000. A $100,000 contract does not even make us blink.”
A big but achievable goal
After its launch in 2009, the popularity and price of Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017 when the coin hit its lifetime peak of around $20,000. However, due to increased selling pressure, the value of the coin slipped to $3,500, before rebounding to $14,000 at the end of June 2019. Currently, the digital currency is trading at $9,600 after shedding 10 percent of its value in the last 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
In June, LedgerX received a green light from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC ) to launch a physically-settled Bitcoin derivatives contracts. It thus beat its competitors, including Bakkt, ErisX, Seed CX, and CoinFLEX to provide such services first in the US market.
Meanwhile, the demand in the Bitcoin futures market is also skyrocketing. Last month, CME Group recorded $1.7 billion in notional value in Bitcoin futures. The platform is also experiencing an influx of new investors.
