Swiss bank Vontobel said it will start trading Switzerland’s first two mini futures to short Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) on Friday, giving investors a tool to bet against the value of the volatile cryptocurrency or to hedge Bitcoin positions, Reuters reported.
“When the value of Bitcoin falls by 10 percent, the value of the more conservative of the two mini futures rises by almost 6 percent while the other gains almost 10 percent,” Vontobel said.
Mini futures are derivative instruments combining features of futures and options and tradable for considerably less than regular futures contracts.
The launch of the two mini futures on the Swiss stock exchange by the country’s second-biggest provider of structured products comes after CME Group Inc, the world’s largest derivatives exchange operator, said it will launch a futures contract for Bitcoin later this year.
The value of Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly this month, plunging as much as 29 percent last week from its Nov. 8 record high of $7,888 and then recovering more than a third of its value in the last four days. For the year, it is up more than 600 percent.