NEW YORK: Bitcoin surged past $18,000 after making its debut on a major global exchange but was trading lower on Monday, highlighting the volatility of the controversial digital currency that has some investors excited but others nervous.

Trading on a futures contract began at 6:00pm (2300GMT) on the Chicago board options exchange (Cboe) at a price of $15,000.

Heavy traffic made the Cboe website inaccessible in the first 20 minutes, but it said that “trading runs on very separate systems and was totally unaffected by the website issues.”

Around 1000GMT on Monday, bitcoin was trading at $17,600 per unit for the futures contract expiring on January 17 after reaching a high of $18,850, according to Cboe’s website, meaning it exceeded the highest value reached on alternative non-regulated internet platforms.

Futures expiring on February 14 and March 14 were higher, trading at $19,140 and $19,100 respectively at the same time on Monday.

A futures contract is a financial product that allows investors to bet on whether the currency’s price will rise or fall.

Bob Fitzsimmons, a futures manager at Wedbush Securities, described the opening as “quiet and steady,” as Cboe data showed around a thousand trades were made in the first two hours.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2017