A large trader (or traders) just plopped down a million dollars betting that Bitcoin would hit $50k sometime in 2018.
As was reported first by the Wall Street Journal, someone just bet that bitcoin will hit $50k at some point in 2018 in the futures markets.
Well it doesn't technically have to hit $50k for the bet to be profitable, but it does have to go quite a bit higher than current levels for the trade to be profitable.
Given that context, and the amount of money risked, it's a bet to take note of for sure.
Some specifics...
The bet was made on the trading platform LedgerX. Where 275 call options that expire Dec. 28, 2018 were bought.
The price per contract was roughly $3,600 per, which equates to just under a million dollars spent on the bet.
At the time of the bet, bitcoin was trading for roughly $16,700. Currently bitcoin is trading around $15,200.
Buyer's remorse?
Given that price decline, I assume the trader wishes he would have waited one more day to put this trade on. :)
However, if bitcoin is indeed heading north of $50k next year, buying at $16,700 or $15,200 doesn't make all that much difference in the grand scheme of things.
Therefore, it's way too early to be talking about buyer's remorse.
A little about LedgerX...
LedgerX is a New York based start up that was the first to officially launch Futures and Options products, back in October of this year.
The difference was that their products were exclusively available to institutional clients while the CBOE and CME newly launched options and futures contracts opened the doors for retail traders to enter the space.
Given that information, and the size of the bet, it is probably safe to assume that this bet was made with institutional money.
Stay informed my friends.
Sources:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/someone.html
Image Sources:
http://www.forexlive.com/news/!/a-million-dollar-bet-that-bitcoin-will-reach-50000-20171221
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ledgerx
Follow me: @jrcornel
Hello jrcornel
Thank you for your participation and this is a very good idea.
But what does the correction explain to the path of bitcoin and to what value stop when it falls?
I wish you luck and success.
Well, the year's not over yet.
It was probably made by Jamie Dimond or the Russian Mafia. Either way, it was probably a good bet.
Well that's a safe bet when bitcoin made 1000% the former year! I would prefer to see a 50k bet that bitcoin would reach 1 million by 2018! This is gambling!
But for me it's just a waste of money. When you have one million to spend, you buy bitcoins and steem!
Hello @adriatik
From my point of view, that bitcoin is considered a safe haven in the future
Despite changing their value from time to time.
I wish you luck and success.
thank you slimane, luck and success to you too!
I would rather buy Steem if I have One Million to spend...and convert it to Steem Power, that way I could help other Steemian people by upvoting them.
Hello @joshvel
Your dream is nice, worthy of appreciation and respect
All bloggers will be happy if your dream come true.
I wish you luck and success.
or be an evil whale and harass other people by flagging them! ahah!
Thank you for that humbling comment! Cheers! 🍸🍸
Let's see what Goldman Sachs says.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/goldman-sachs-launching-trading-desk-for-bitcoin-report-says.html
https://qz.com/1164278/bitcoin-plunge-former-goldman-sach-trader-novogratz-warns-the-cryptocurrency-has-much-farther-to-fall/
Didn't Mcafee say that it would hit a million would like to actually see him put his money where his mouth is though
Yes safetony he said he would eat his genitals on live television if it does not hit $500,000 within 3 years and I think he updated his prediction to a million as well at some point. However, considering that isn't allowed on TV to my knowledge I'm sure he will be fine haha.
How do you short that ;) might already be too short as it is
Yes he did say that! But he didn't say by 2018 though! Right now he is explaining daily which coin he is into (on his twitter account)
thats a bold move cotton, lets see if it pays off.
I am totally agree with you.
It's not a safe bet.
Quite contrary, if people are going to say its a safe bet when the thing itself cannot even fullfil it purpose, it is a sure sign for a bubble. It's a Maid's Hausse
Not a safe bet at all. With so much influence from banks, investors, and company owners about the livelihood of bitcoin and all alt coins in the news, I think the price will begin to fluctuate even more the way we see in the stock markets. At this very moment, Dec 22 11:00 am EST, BTC is at $13,200. That is a big drop from a few days ago like, Friday, Dec 16 at 11:00 pm EST at a high $19,390. I think people who had bitcoins were starting to get scared and cashed in on their winnings right away. Now that it is going down, many more new investors will buy in to bitcoin in hopes of cashing in on the rise of its price again. And so goes the cycle of buying low and selling high, the way the stock market is.
I think many more people will begin to see the potential of all altcoins as a way to make money buy investing in cryptocurrency similar to the way the stock market works.
I just saw an article about Goldman Sachs creating a trading platform for bitcoins. Soon many more banks and investing firms will follow suit.
Hello @yomaicoin
Do not let fear dominate you, as long as you intend to invest your money for the long term
As you know all currencies, bonds and stocks exhibition ups and downs of the value of
If we go back in the middle of 2016, when you return the value of bitcoin
How panic spread but then jumped and then back then jumped and then back and so forth
I wish you luck and success.
Thank you much for the kind words. Please check out my latest blog regarding Coinbase and how the value of BTC and its other hosted altcoins provides the opportunity to make $1000+ in seconds. Let me know what you think.
I wanted to and an update to my comment. Although there are high fees, you can make money from coinbase as well. Look at my most recent blog about this. Happened in the past few hours.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@yomaicoin/make-a-usd1000-in-seconds-on-coinbase
Hello @yomaicain
Your topics are very good, worth reading and commenting, I wish everyone read it.
Yeah I think a lot of people are taking their profits and getting ready for the next surge.
That's a very optimistic bet. I'm bullish on bitcoin due to LN, but it will take quite a bit of news to get to $50k. And with ETH, BCH and the other major alts gaining more market share, the climb to $50k might not be as easy.
I think it's possible.
I definitely think he made a good bet. Many Bitcoin proponents have been making similar price calls for 2018. Mike Novogratz called 40k by end of year 2018... We haven't even nearly hit mass market as far as Bitcoin is concerned... There's many more exchanges that are going to list Bitcoin and there's many more people who are going to learn about what Bitcoin is and why its such a great store of value. Personally, I think a $100k price tag by the end of 2018 isn't far off.
Is Bitcoin really able to hold mass market? Do not think so. The transactions fees are so high and it tends to go even higher. $50 for a Bitcoin transaction? The initial idea of low transactions fee, is long gone. I'm quite sure that when JPMorgan and all those finance Giants got into Bitcoin they knew that accepting Bitcoin in the traditional exchange would over burned the Bitcoin network. What's your view about an immediate solution for this issue?
No inmediate solution.
And it is a real issue.
However I think that at this point it's worth taking a moment to remember what we are talking about here. I know you guys in the crypto world are fast learners and tech savy, but we are at the cutting edge.
Satoshi gave us the key to unlocking a new technology that solved the issue of consensus in his paper and then proved it could be done through the initial implementation.
I work in thechnology and I can swear that scaling the initial design beyond a certain point allways requires a cualitative step.
Wether it will be a completely new kind of algorithm like the one Byteball uses or a second layer technology like the Lightning Network, I could't say.
What I can say is that WE BEST NOT PUSH IT.
Bitcoin has got this far surving hacker attacks, economic attacks, social attacks and legal attacks.
Satoshi saw a problem in society and he invented a technology to solve it.
Bitcoin's problem today is a technical problem and it will be a technology that solves it.
If you need to transact in crypto today, there are a ton of cryptocurrencies with 1/100 the load bitcoin handles that offer more speed and privacy and are cheaper and can use smart contracts and... well. I think you know them as I do.
I use Dash for now.
Sure , no immediate solution. Insightful replied. Thank you. Another issue that is unfortunate is the issue of getting in, I mean crossing the gate inside the cryptocurrencies ecosystem, where usually Bitcoin is the 'gate in' into crypto and the present moment high fees has a profound effect towards all others cryptos which does not accept credit or debit cards for purchase. <3
I get in through Litecoin and use it to move around between exchanges. Faster than BTC or BCH because it has 1/4 the block time.
segwit2x ?
I think the transaction fees will go down once the exchanges have the support to onboard new users quicker. I am waiting days verification right now. Also there are a lot of people who would be in it but they don't have the knowledge on how to sign up and buy. Once those two things get sorted out, which I believe will happen with time I think the prices will start to really go up and trend it up for a while.
Just Hodl It ! I think if everyone only had the amount they they were willing to lose . Then the price would go way up.
Heard wall street and banks are into btc, spurring demand and he may have good chance.
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50K, dont think so, only 2 weeks left, lots of new downward pressure, BCC, CBOE, CME...
Too bad he didn't done a short :)
Haha yes he should have bet for bitcoin to hit $10,000 because it looks very much like it is going there soon.
Come on people a 50k bitcoin would make crypto bigger than the gold market while there is only limited usage of blockchain today in the real world. If there would be mass creation of usefull applications 50k would be very stretch.
I really wonder if people jumping into crypto have any clue at all of what they are doing and at which level we are already...
Hello @sbrys
Do not worry about people, get used to it
You will be convinced bitcoin is a safe haven for saving.
I wish you luck and success.
Calling Bitcoin a safe have is quite strange no ? Value changes day by day. It can be a good investment on that I agree. It can also be a very bad one :)
For this reason, the investor should invest for a medium-term or long-range, To avoid mistakes during trading.
"According to the World Gold Council, the total value of all gold ever mined is about $7.8 trillion."
At 50K per bitcoin it would be at less than 1 trillion market cap plus it's a lot easier to loose your bitcoin wallet than a gold coin with over 4million BTC being predicted as being lost.
Last I read gold was at 3 Trillion but indeed several sources for that. Bitcoin going to 50k would also impact the rest of crypto I think so it would be coming quite close.
But anyway macro economical this would be absolutely crazy. For storage of value ? Everything is possible but feels very unlikely to me...
thinking more along the lines of stock market and derivatives market that is 4 or 5 times the size of the worlds economy it's a store of value in terms of bitcoin trading it for something else is the fun part but the tech is pretty cool so I see no reason why blockchain technology can't get to a few trillion as it is useful!
Can you give 1 real usefull application that is not situated in the crypto world itself ? Apart from Steemit (that is still very techy) I don't know any.
https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@safetony/healthcare-and-the-blockchain
Ok this looks like an interesting idea for blockchain. But why does the coin/token behind it need a 'value' ? I was not stating it right before. blockchain itself can be very usefull but why is the intrinsic value needed of the chain itself ?
Gold is a barbarous relic with no real world use cases outside industrial applications.
No but in essence everything is useless :) I can understand how people attribute value to gold. It's the rarest metal on earth. Bitcoin can be copied overnight to serve the same purpose.
I really believe in blockchain tech I just dont understand the value attribution. I also never get any arguments about it. People just shout I will see the value after a while :)
I think he made a good bet but only time will tell
Wouldn't be surprised. But I'd rather make 10-20X on altcoins rather than 5X on Bitcoin.
Do you know what price he would be called at? I wouldn't be surprised to see a sudden crash way down, but it will probably recover pretty quickly.
Hashgraph makes me wonder about the future of all blockchain coins.
Thats quite a big bet considering the big boys CME and CBOE are here to tame it
that's my 2 pennies as well..
This has given me hope that the current decline is temporary!
Yes, I have been waiting for a while
When it was worth 8800 $
Same here 😄
Here I am worried about my $50 investsments in some altcoin... not worried really, but this gives me some context
LOL. It's all relative. If the guy who bet a million dollars is a multi-billionaire he's really taking very little risk. Likewise, if pineapple has $51 to his name and plops down $50 on a bet, he has crazy risk-tolerance.
A pineapple has nothing to his name but steem. ;-)
hehe good one :)
Lol I bet there’s a lot of us in the same boat. I wish I had the money to throw 1 mil on a bet
@jrcornel Only time will tell, but I like this wager far more than the McAfee wager...though they would be equally devastating.
Bitcoin to $50k by the end of next year after the price action we've seen this year seems to be a pretty good bet. Easy for me to say though, not having a mil riding on it. :-)
That is one big bet and as more people are learning about crypto currencies the price seems like its on upward trend.
If trend continue to go up as last months it would be easy bet.
50K is a big number, but anyway; it is possible. Let we focus on the sbd and steem, that is where the real increase should be.
This is a really big bet, But i wouldn't be surprised if Bitcoin will end up over 50,000$ at the end of 2018. So i guess it's a normal bet by him.
I wish him and our wallets good luck !
As you mentioned that it may reach $50k in 2018, but the decreasing part started again. What about it?
I seriously doubt this, since btc fees have been screwing over all the ppl that use bitcoin for small transfers, thus leading to them moving on to different currencies. For btc to reach 50k$, the fees would need to decrease by a lot. Many people see ltc, bch, xrp as better alternatives to btc.
hope he is right
This is still a risky call but we will see lol
I think that Bitcoin could achieve this easy.
rumor has it that it might go up to 100k...
That sounds like a fairly conservative bet. If it grows... 90% less than it did this year, it would still hit 50k.
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Speculation on the speculators LOL
ha..lol. a friend of mine called me tonight freaking out at the drop in price. HODL!!!
smart guy lol. I would do the same if i had the money :)
I am agree with you ! I think the BTC can go at 50 000$ in 2018 :)
The BTC cash can go at 10 000$....
i think 50k is a little bit optimistic. 20k is very realistic imo, but time will tell... ;)
I think it's likely that Bitcoin will go even higher during 2018... Bitcoin was close to 20.000 USD already and it seems there will be more sharp ups and downs.
We have heard and knew a lot out this cryptocurrency. We dont even have any idea that who is behind this company and what aim it has. Still, we have made it as the largest cryptocurrency in the world. Bitcoin is most popular than the other cryptocurrencies. Last Monday, bitcoin was trading at more than $19,500. which was almost close to $20,000. But today, Bitcoin is trading at around $11,800. How strange isnt it?.
@jrcornel He could make more by investing that amount in BTC :) He is damn right! The price drop is just a normal correction before it skyrockets again!
Highest Regards
@lordneroo
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That's putting your money where your mouth is!
Such news might just bring it up to that level, lol.
Current situation is telling that traders won the bet...
Time will tell indeed. It looks exciting though.
I think he might be on to something.. but hopefully it goes down a lot first so we can all BTFD!
So if I understand right, it's 1 million bet for Bitcoin to reach 50k in the course of next year @ 2.00 odds. Good bet if you ask me, a year is a mighty long time in crypto.
That's a very atrocious way to bet, well what can I say?
I am almost sure that bitcoin the next year will even hit the 100k ☺