The price of bitcoin dropped in trading Sunday after the long-hyped debut of futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange fizzled on its debut.

Bitcoin hit a new record high of $19,781.75 in the lead-up to the launch of the CME Group Inc. futures, which themselves debuted at over $20,000 for January 2018 contracts. Then the prices of both dropped in light trading.

As of 10:30 p.m. EST, CME-BTCF2018 (January) bitcoin futures were trading at $18,745, with 576 contracts exchanged. Trading on February, March and April contracts was nearly nonexistent, with only five contracts exchanged across the three types as prices sat at $20,000, $20,300 and $20,000, respectively. Bitcoin itself was trading at $18.656.28.

Reflecting the prices on CME, bitcoin futures on the week-old Cboe Global Markets exchange traded in a similar range, initially surging above $20,000 before XBT.1 January 2018 bitcoin futures settled back to $18,670 as of 10:30 p.m. XBT.2 and XBT.3 February and March futures were trading at lower rates than their poorly traded Cboe rivals, sitting at $18,770 and $18,850 each.

The slow start to trading on the CME is being attributed by some as a case of investors waiting to see what happens. “We saw a nice open on light volume, but pretty uneventful so far,” Spencer Bogart, partner at Blockchain Capital LLC told Reuters. “I do think we could certainly pick up in volume as Asia begins to open. This is a brand-new asset class and I think perhaps a lot of investors want to sit back and see how this plays out before dipping their toes in this market.”

The introduction of bitcoin futures has been long hyped as a sign of growing maturity for bitcoin with the idea being that institutional trading on established exchanges would bring new money into and legitimize the bitcoin market. Although the introduction of futures trading has certainly added to the media attention on bitcoin, their introduction on both Cboe and CME so far has only achieved a moderate level of price stability to bitcoin.

The price of bitcoin is still experiencing increases and decreases, but it is doing so at a level significantly lower than the massive bull run that saw the price of bitcoin rocket from just below $1,000 at the beginning of the year, complete with unprecedented price increases and price drops in between.

Photo: Lars Plougmann/Wikimedia Commons