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Former CFTC chairman confirms bitcoin futures market was created for price suppression in 2017

Section: Documentation

Just as the Western gold futures market was created for price suppression in 1974:

http://www.gata.org/node/17081

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Trump Administration Popped 2017 Bitcoin Bubble, Ex-CFTC Chair Says

By Brady Dale
CoinDesk.com, New York
Tuesday, October 22, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Trump administration acted to deflate the bitcoin bubble of 2017 by allowing the introduction of futures products, a former official said Monday.

Christopher Giancarlo, who left the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission at the end of his five-year term as chairman in April, told CoinDesk in an interview:

"One of the untold stories of the past few years is that the CFTC, the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the National Economic Council director at the time, Gary Cohn, believed that the launch of bitcoin futures would have the impact of popping the bitcoin bubble. And it worked."

... Dispatch continues below ...


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In a speech at the Pantera Summit in San Francisco on Monday, Giancarlo elaborated, saying bitcoin's dramatic price run-up in December 2017 was the first major bubble following the 2008 financial crisis. That's why the Trump administration acted in concert to address it in a pro-markets manner, he said.

Bitcoin futures listed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the CBOE Futures Exchange were announced by the CFTC on Dec. 1, 2017, and went live on Dec. 18. Bitcoin's price peaked at nearly $20,000 one day earlier, on Dec. 17, before falling dramatically in subsequent weeks.

"We saw a bubble building and we thought the best way to address it was to allow the market to interact with it," Giancarlo told the crowd gathered at the Ritz-Carlton on Nob Hill.

Of course there are different views on what ultimately brought bitcoin prices back down to earth, reaching lows in the $3,000 range in late 2018. However, Giancarlo cited research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve that also credits the introduction of bitcoin futures for reining in a market driven by optimists. ...

... For the remainder of the report:

https://www.coindesk.com/trump-administration-popped-2017-bitcoin-bubble...

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