Bitcoin price surges to almost $17,000 as trading begins on ‘futures’ exchange

In what many see as the first true test for Bitcoin’s price, one of the world’s largest future exchanges, CBOE, has launched a Bitcoin futures product on Sunday. 

The result, so far, is good for Bitcoin: The price is at $16,939 according to CoinMarketCap, up roughly 23% in the last 24 hours. The market cap of Bitcoin is currently $283 billion. 

Shortly after launch, the exchange’s site went down under heavy traffic. According to CBOE, more than 800 Bitcoin futures contracts were traded in the first 2 hours of trading. 

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