The price of bitcoin steadied in trading Sunday night following the launch of the Cboe XBT tradable bitcoin futures contracts on the Cboe Global Markets exchange.

Bitcoin trading was all over the place in the lead-up to the launch. The price of bitcoin surged $1,700 in early morning trading to $15,591.63 at 9:30 a.m. EST before continuing to fluctuate, dropping to a low of $14,532.54 just prior to debut of the futures at 6 p.m.

Upon XBT’s debut, the price of bitcoin shot back up to around the $15,800 range as the influence of the futures contracts appeared to start steadying the price. Still, demand was high, as the exchange had outages at times because of heavy traffic.

A futures contract is a tradable legal agreement that entitles its holder to buy or sell a particular commodity or financial instrument at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future. In terms of bitcoin, that gives a contract holder the ability to buy or sell bitcoin at a set price in the future. That means that in theory, it takes away some of the speculation surrounding bitcoin by locking in projected future prices, although naturally only for those trading in the futures themselves.

Not everyone agrees with that contention, however. Some say the legitimization brought to the market through futures trading will actually prompt a rise in demand for bitcoin, which has already seen its price rise about sixteenfold so far this year. An exchange created by CME Group Inc. is expected to launch its own bitcoin futures next week.

“Increasing legitimacy of cryptocurrencies as investments is also reflected in the growing number of active exchanges,” Dr. Daniele Bianchi, assistant professor of finance at the Warwick Business School, told SiliconANGLE. “All this is going to generate increasing pressure on the demand side of the cryptocurrency market, that is, prices are likely to increase further in the short- to medium-term.”

Regardless of the effects futures trading may have on the price of bitcoin going forward, others continue to warn that bitcoin is in the middle of a bubble that will eventually come crashing down. In an interesting twist, Forbes reported that Torsten Slok, Deutsche’s Bank’s chief international economist has issued a warning to clients that not only will the bitcoin bubble burst in 2018, its crash will also impact the global economy.

Reserve Bank of New Zealand Acting Governor Grant Spencer also rang the bitcoin alarm bell over the weekend. Spencer said in an interview that bitcoin “looks remarkably like a bubble forming to me,” and that “over the centuries we’ve seen bubbles, and this appears to be a bit of a classic case. With a bubble, you never know how far it’s going to go before it comes down.”

As of 9 p.m. EST, bitcoin was trading at $15,923.61, well down from its record high of $17,147.45 achieved in trading on Dec. 7. But notably for investors looking to profit, it’s heading again in the right direction.

Image: CBoe