10 December 2017: Bitcoin futures arrive on Wall Street
The Cboe Futures Exchange began trading the first bitcoin futures contracts on a regulated US exchange, with its website buckling under the traffic. It was a step toward mainstream legitimacy for crypto, allowing traders to bet on falling prices for the first time on a major exchange. Bitcoin peaked just a week later, and some argued that the ability to short it helped end the rally.
The lesson: When it becomes easy to bet against an asset, one-way rallies often end.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Bitcoin at the start of 2018 → $7,143 today, vs $2,519 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2018, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 7.1 times the money, and $4,624 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Bitcoin teaches: Extraordinary returns came bundled with repeated drawdowns of 75 percent or more; the gains went mostly to holders who could survive each collapse without selling.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $315 | $317,460 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $14,000 | $7,143 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $7,200 | $13,889 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Bitcoin? Every starting year and the full story →
More Bitcoin history
- 3 January 2009: Bitcoin's genesis block is mined
- 7 February 2014: Mt. Gox halts bitcoin withdrawals
- 12 May 2021: Musk stops accepting Bitcoin for Teslas
- 19 May 2021: Bitcoin's May crash
- 22 May 2010: Two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin
- 9 June 2021: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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