Crypto Currents 12/01/17

The 11 biggest names in cryptocurrency right now. As bitcoin prices continue to break records, the enterprises uses of cryptofinance has cooled. The “‘blockchain without bitcoin’ crowd hasn’t gone away, but for the moment, it is bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that everyone is talking about and eyeing closely,” reports Daniel Roberts of Yahoo Finance. The media outlet just launched extensive new charts and data for more than 100 different coins and published a list of the 11 biggest names in the space right now.

The uncertain future of bitcoin futures. Skepticism over bitcoin as an investment vehicle persists but its “exposure to risk” is an irresistible sell, and the justifications match those used for the last batch of vehicles that packaged risk to investors, writes Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine. Those trading institutions themselves, however, plan to put the technology to use in much more controlled ways.

Eventually, “CME Group, like every other centralized financial intermediary, will announce with great fanfare that it is experimenting with putting its settlement system on ‘the blockchain,’ Levine writes. “But of course these blockchains are not the bitcoin blockchain; they are private blockchains that only approved banks and institutions can use and that have trusted central administrators. I am looking forward to the day when CME’s bitcoin futures contract trades on a blockchain, but not the bitcoin blockchain.”