Loading ...Letter to Wall Street Journal: (parts)
I am the Chairman and founder of Interactive Brokers LLC, a futures commission merchant and broker-dealer with over $ 3.8 billion in regulatory net capital and over $1.2 billion in client margin funds
If the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or any other clearing organization clears a cryptocurrency together with other products, then a large cryptocurrency price move that destabilizes members that clear cryptocurrencies will destabilize
the clearing organization itself and its ability to satisfy its fundamental obligation to pay the winners and collect from the losers on the other products in the same clearing pool.
Margining such a product in a reasonable manner is impossible. While the buyer (the long side) of a cryptocurrency futures contract or call option could be required to put up 100% of the value to ensure safety, determining the margin requirement for the seller (the short side) is impossible. Instituting daily price move limits on cryptocurrency derivatives does not solve the problem.
In a runaway upward market for example (like the silver market in the 1980’s caused by the Hunt brothers), the futures price gets locked limit-up day after day with little or no trading and the short sellers are unable to cover, leading them (and potentially their clearing firms) to ruin.
complete letter
M.C. Comment:
My guess is TPTB want bitcoin futures, to “play games with” maybe even suppress the prices, to punish investors like they do with Gold all the time. Punish investors. Then if the economy collapses again, TPTB can blame bitcoin. I think they blamed the Gold standard for the crash of 1929.