On the last Friday of each month, CME bitcoin futures expire. This time, the Day X will come on November 30. Earlier, before the expiration of futures contracts, the price of bitcoin fell. But there is an opinion that, given the already significant downfall, futures will not affect the price.
On November 26, the cost of the first cryptocurrency dropped to $3,746. The price of the asset began to decline after it previously exceeded $4,100. Some analysts believe that in the next day or two the cost of bitcoin may be fixed near the mark of $4,000.
However, we should not forget that on Friday, the CME exchange has deadlines for another batch of bitcoin futures. As a rule, it drops the BTC price by several points. Despite the fact that futures trading does not directly affect prices, since trading is carried out using cash, price increases occur as shorts on the part of large players. Shorts and longs allow price manipulations. If traders' strategy is based on long positions on bitcoin and shorting on futures, then as the contract expiration approaches they can sell existing bitcoins and thus, after the price falls, close short positions in futures with a good profit.
However, not all experts support the view that the cost of bitcoin gets reduced before the expiration dates of futures contracts. For example, analysts at Cindicator note that futures markets are insignificantly small compared to stock trading, so they have no effect on the value of bitcoin. Experts conducted a study and reported that over the past year there were strong bearish sentiments on the market, which were to blame for the decline in the value of digital assets, and not futures.
Previously, a similar opinion was expressed by CME top manager Tim McCourt. He is confident that futures contracts cannot influence the digital money market, since they constitute only a small part of it.
In the meantime, we can observe a real bear market and a drop in the value of digital assets. One of the upcoming events that can affect the direction of the trend is scheduled for January 24th. Then the Bakkt platform will be launched, which will open access to crypto to institutional investors.
Earlier, digital analyst Willy Woo came to the conclusion that we are in the middle of a bear market. This means that bitcoin has to fall for several months, and then it reaches the bottom. The exact timeline has not been specified, but it is assumed to happen between April and May 2019.
Meanwhile, the hard fork of bitcoin cash unleashed a real war and the race for hashrate. Because of it, the price of BTC in just two weeks fell from $6,300 to $3,700. This really greatly accelerated reaching the bottom, which was originally scheduled for the middle of next year.
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