CME Crypto Futures Launch to Manipulate BTC & ETH Prices Says, Analyst

Crypto trader and Youtuber Austin Arnold in a new video, warns that the crypto markets could be subject to price manipulation in the coming months.

He opines that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s launch of Bitcoin micro futures in May will enable conventional market players to control the price of Bitcoin without actually owning or holding it.

He further says the contracts are aimed at retail investors and provide a perfectly legitimate way for them to control the price of the cryptocurrency.

“Ultimately, if the big guys are able to do this with what the CME contracts offer now, this is a good thing, because it does give the little guy equal exposure to these derivatives. This is [also] a bad thing because it will lead to market manipulation. With CME cryptocurrency futures, investors/traders aren’t required to actually ever hold Bitcoin..” 

Future Contracts are considered to be prone to falsification, which happens when a large number of contracts are opened with no intention of being executed, resulting in false bearish or bullish sentiment. The date of bitcoin futures contract expiration has always been considered as a factor for the price drops in bitcoin.

CME’s Regular contracts for Ethereum

He also speaks about CME having regular-sized contracts for Ethereum, while it’s just micro futures for Bitcoin. However, the Ethereum contracts have seen a great level of volume.

The analyst says this will launch both Ethereum holders and Bitcoin holders as they have already ventured into both the tokens. Also, they have been pretty successful, as their Ethereum future contracts have already seen 767 contract trades per day for the last month. 

“… The exchange also launched Ethereum futures contracts last month and those have seen around 767 contracts traded on average each day or equivalent to around 38,000 Ethereum on average traded each day since launch… So whether you hold Bitcoin, or whether you hold Ethereum, this does affect you.”