According to reports earlier this week, rumors have emerged that Nasdaq, the securities exchange considered as the second contender to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), will officially be launching futures contracts for Bitcoin (BTC).

This report has since been substantiated by a confirmation by the Vice President of Nasdaq's media and communications department, which stated that the contracts will officially be listed and launched fully by the first half of 2019.

According to its Vice-President, this would put the futures contract on a similar time-frame as the Bakkt futures contract which is being developed by ICE. The latter's contract was previously referred to as Bitcoins ‘Saving grace‘ when it comes to the market. The futures themselves were initially due to launch in early December.

This was not to be the case, however, as it has since been postponed for a launch in the tail end of January. In a statement made to the related press, Joseph Christinat stated that:

“Bitcoin Futures will be listed and it should launch in the first half of next year – we’re just waiting for the go ahead from the CFTC but there’s been enough work put into this to make that academic.”

The VP went on to remark further upon the associated speculation and circulating rumors that have continued on, due to the unconfirmed report by the Wall Street Journal, which created a great deal of the media hype over the contracts.

When it comes to these rumors, Chrstinat fired back with the following:

“We’ve seen plenty of speculation and rumors about what we might be doing, but no one has thought to come to us and ask if we can confirm it, so, here you go – we’re doing this, and it’s happening.”

According to reports, the company has been working on delivering these contracts for the majority of 2018. Along with these contracts, cryptocurrency has been in the firm's vision for a number of years. This comes during a time when the cryptocurrency market is undergoing its greatest decline of the year, as we currently see from the likes of Bitcoin, which has since fallen below the original $6,000 support level at the $4,000 marker.

While this has made a profound dent in the confidence of the average investor, the exchange itself is relatively undeterred by the bearish outlook. As the VP made abundantly clear:

“We’ve put a hell of a lot of money and energy into delivering the ability to do this and we’ve been all over it for a long time – way before the market went into turmoil, and that will not affect the timing of this in any way. No. Period. We’re doing this no matter what.”

The contract is poised to trade on the Nasdaq future platform which is known as NFX, this was revealed by reporters from the Wall Street Journal. The platform itself was focused primarily on energy trading up until this point of 2018.

The official launch of Bitcoin Futures certainly has all the potential to push the adoption of the cryptocurrency of an asset class in 2019, and allow it to gain a greater level of exposure among the accredited institutional class of investors.

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