Looking quite strong, up over 1 this morning same thing with the shanghai composite. Then european equities right now are also in the green. The cac ass off, ftses off i spoke too soon i looked at the ftse beforehand. The ftse is up, the dax is up. Everything else is down just marginally well, here are the big stories were watching for you today. We are continuing to follow a developing story out of Southern California new evacuations have been ordered as a string of massive wildfires continue to grow the thomas fire, the biggest in the area, still on the move. Officials say the blaze is just 10 contained. Its already burned more than 360 square miles of land we will continue to follow this developing story, bring you any updates and developments as we get them. On this weeks economic agenda, tomorrow, look for the november Producer Price index. The fed also kicks off a twoday meeting. On wednesday well get cpi as well as the fed decision this latest Economic Forecast and Janet YellensNews Conference on thursday, retail sales and import prices, and then friday Industrial Production. On the earnings front, adobe systems, costco and oracle are all set to report on thursday. In political news, alabama voters head to the polls tomorrow to decide whether to elect republican candidate roy moore or Democrat Doug Jones to the senate the Moore Campaign releasing a robocall advertisement by President Trump, urging residents to get out and vote for roy moore. The president said we need that seat we need roy voting for us. Pollsters say this race is especially difficult to predict as poll respondents may not be truthful about supporting a candidate who has been accused of sexual misconduct. The newest way to bet on bitcoin has arrived. Today is the first full day that Bitcoin Futures trade on the cboe, and dom chu, bravely, as accepted this assignment this is not i mean, are you ready to move into the future . Is this something do you have a handle on this i dont so, i would admit this right now i, like many other americans and many other citizens globally, do not have a true handle on this, and that just speaks to the idea that this is a very i wouldnt say an infant market, because that implies things are just starting, but it is one where people dont have a lot of familiarity, and thats going to be a big deal for why. The futures trading idea has maybe lent a little bit of legitimacy to this idea that bitcoin could be an asset class, but theres still a healthy amount of skepticism out there, and this is also a market, by the way, as joe mentioned, that is at least for right now still trying to get its sea legs the two trading halts that we saw early on for Bitcoin Trading if you take a look at some of the prices, we did see some high swings up there. 17,500 was the last trade we saw for Bitcoin Futures on cboe, where one futures contract, unlike other futures market, is just one bitcoin so, if you look at its actually a very easy way to compare. This is a higher price than elsewhere in the market right now, the spot markets so to speak, where other exchanges that trade bitcoin are trading significantly lower than that 17,500 right now. This futures contract is also one that expires in january. As youve seen on these quotes, about 2,7002,800 contracts have traded so far. That is not exactly liquid, so were talking about 40 to 50 million in notional price, and thats in the first 12 hours of trading. There are three contracts so far that are listed. The front month being january, settlement for january prices. There are also some more thinly traded ones in february and march as well. But what it comes down to, guys, is a market has kicked off there were fireworks in terms of price appreciation but not in terms of Trading Volume yet. And so, what we can expect to see is, as more people get involved in it, whether those Trading Volumes really increase will maybe be more of a sentiment gauge about whether these futures markets are really going to be that robust. And of course, this is all ahead of the cme groups launch of Bitcoin Futures, which are slightly different because they use a different price reference to set their values, and also, the cme contracts may attract, arguably, more institutional interests because one for one, bitcoin for future for cboe, five bitcoins to one for the cme contract, so its a bigger contract. Whats the margin so, its 44 right now for the cboe ones, and its all going to depend on your broker, right . The person that youre actually going to trade these through is going to have requirements some brokers are going to let you have the ability to buy or sell, no matter what other brokers out there are going to say maybe were going to put restrictions on what you can do you cant take short positions yet. We dont know how its going to fluctuate, but theres logistics still being worked out. You cant sell the futures . Look at Interactive Brokers theyre not lettingo short them yet. 50 margin on interactive. Right i was wondering who would provide the other side you know, this is i dont know. I mean, since i traded all day long, i hope i do why cant i sell them you should be able to sell them thats what a futures market is all about, right i should be able to sell short if i want to i should be able to sell against my position if you put a margin up, i dont understand why you cant go the other way if you get the margin but it speaks to whether or not the brokers internal systems can monitor the margin effective lets formally introduce everybody. Sure. You just spoke without an introduction matthew getz, cofounder and ceo of blocktower capital. Brian kelly of Brian Kelly Capital and fast money contributors, also, sirats here let me start this way, sirat, we were just talking off camera when everybody calls you and says i need to be in this, isnt that like the high sign that youre supposed to run for the hills . It is, and its been happening over the last few weeks where friends will call and say how do i get part of bitcoin and you try to explain blockchain and they say everybodys making money in this, so how come im not in it . As we get into a liquid market, i think theres more potential for people to understand whats going on my question is, you have all these different systems going on, so will it be arbitrage or are they going to be playing this and its going to get more complicated . Yeah, it will be like any other asset class out there. Right now its incredibly inefficient. We have a young market, but bitcoins been around for eight, nine years now the trading markets are really just maturing. So it will get more complicated. More strategies will come in will we have options and all that this is the first day of futures trading. We havent had a lot but to your point about clients calling you and saying, hey, how do i get in, to me, thats a bullish sign were looking at Retail Investors in this, almost no Institutional Investors have really put any stake in this. And thats been a huge barrier, that Institutional Investors have a mandate where they cannot be in bitcoin. So you still have this potential of natural buyer or seller absolutely. But this is the reverse of what most people usually think happens, which is that somehow, the Institutional Investors leave the retail guys holding the bag, and this time, retail folks think theyre going to leave the big Institutions Holding the bag. Do you buy that i totally agree and dom put it well. Like, you have this building crescendo of volume only a few tens of millions of dollars so far. Bitcoin over the last 24 hours traded over 14 billion. So even when this starts to become shortable and people start doing that, its going to take a lot of risk capital to actually affect the market in a way thats meaningful, but we do expect this to continue to build and more liquidity to continue to come in one of the analogies that i really like is actually commodities. So, with commodities for a long time you had certain assets that werent easily held or people couldnt get exposure to it. If you wanted exposure to sugar or coffee, thats not something you can easily hold. It spoils. Theres seasonality, theres different elements to it there is no seasonality to bitcoin, but it is operationally complex and hard to hold and now people have a vehicle to do that. Can i buy it on one exchange and sell on another . Are people just doing that all day long you could. You could, but what so, the two contracts that we have, the one thats out right now for cboe and the one that comes out with the cme, are based on two different reference prices remember, a futures price like Wti Crude Oil futures are based on a certain price for crude at a certain time so if the gemini, which is the cboe price, is different than the one that the reference rate for the cme im not even trading futures here im just trading straight bitcoin in zimbabwe im saying coinbase is selling at one price and people will be doing that all day long. All day long, just do that. Thats arguably the next frontier for electronic trading and high frequency, the idea that you can move between jurisdictions. Whats the biggest arbitrage opportunity . Because there are certain exchanges where you wont be able to easily sell it if i wanted to buy in the u. S. And sell in zimbabwe because the spread is so huge, thats not really possible. Its not really possible, particularly with zimbabwe, because you have to pay a couple peoples off to get that done, so that doesnt pay off. Thats an example. But the korea u. S. Spread is usually pretty big because its really difficult once you get money into korea with capital controls to get that money back. So youll have that spread but intermarket, even between gemini and coinbase, you can see a couple percent spread, and there are major firms that are trading that arb right now. By the way, thats one of the reasons why arguably when you talk about volume driving things, the more volume comes in, the smaller those spreads arguably become. Right now theres a huge transaction cost even though they wont say it up front, about the commission side of things, there is a fairly widespread between where you can buy a bitcoin and where you can sell its been like 120 bucks overnight. And on certain exchanges, theres also a transaction fee on top of that so as you have these very fat, juicy steaks out there worth of spread, its going to attract more people into the marketplace. As more people go into the marketplace, you can see some of those transaction costs, perhaps becoming a little bit smaller because theres now competition, but you dont know whether or not it really lends the legitimacy to this idea that bitcoin and youre actually starting to see that already. So youll have arbitragers who bring together the futures and the underlying you have highfrequency traders, people using quant signals who couldnt before. You have almost a funny psychological moment where people feel like they have to be in, and now there is finally a vehicle where people can be. For those who have missed the train, and weve been using this analogy for the last year, because by the way, i missed the train on josephs trump rally, because it started at penn station. Its now in st. Barts, i think. Correct. Its turned into planes, trains, ships and made its way to sao paulo. The equator. The question i have is, to the extent you see a potential hiccup along the way or a pullback along the way for those of us who think maybe we want to be in this but maybe we dont want to be in this right now, is there some catalyst that would take you there yes. So, ill let brian comment, too. I think you havent missed any train. Its Something Like 1 of people in the world own this asset. And one good analogy that i know brian and we like to talk about, people say digital gold. We like the analogy of the offshore banking system, which is 20 trillion. Currently, all of cryptocurrency combined is a little over 400 billion. So, its still trivial relative to real fundamental demand that we can see in the world today. Wow, and it does the same thing. An order of magnitude better and cheaper. I mean, its i guess it allows you to do some things you cant always do well, its actually not well, of shore [ everyone talking at once ] listen, people have put money in switzerland theres nothing wrong with that. I just cant believe i think i heard you just say its like a buyandhold asset. Well, its hyper volatile, right . You talk about youre never going to issue gaap for it, inflate away the debt theres lots of issues with this as a true currency. But youre talking about it a currency right. I dont think anybody in the bitcoin world what is it . Its like gold. Its like digital gold. Remember, were going to have digital equities and digital commodities. This is just the tip of the spear. So we can talk about the technology, and its exciting, and the volatility, but theres more to this than just arguing whether or not this makes a good currency. We talk about bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin what about ethereum, ethereum classic, which they think is like the value play of these things light coin, z cash. Is there an investment thesis on buying ethereum on the basis, on the thinking that its going to be the next futures contract to be issued so, yes, weve already seen some private futures contracts being issued on that i think the relative value trade for ethereum is that this is the new internet this is a decentralized internet, and it is trading at roughly a tenth of the price, a tenth of the market cap or Network Value of bitcoin i would argue with the amount of stuff thats being built on top of it that it should be more valuable than bitcoin. Bitcoin gets a lot of headlines, but the reality is, how long is it going to take for someone to issue futures on ethereum not that long. Yeah. But its also about the size of these networks, right ethereum is a Blockchain Bitcoin has a blockchain its about how these things are used the more people who use these mechanisms, the more valuable the tokens issued off of them become. To your point, for investable, for a lot of, i think institutional and other Retail Investors, were looking at blockchain technology, the ledger technology. Doesnt matter whether its bitcoin or ethereum, and there are companies behind this, real, legitimate Companies Like microsoft, oracle, ibm, that are providing their consumers Real Technology and advice, and i think thats one way to play it without getting into the hypervolatile but thats going to be its not going to move the needle for them. Its not. So if you want to be exposed to this, thats not going to outweigh pc sales in the decline of microsoft but depending on your risk profile as to what you want to do. Right i have a practical question. Youre an investor in bitcoin through coinbase, which is i think most Retail Investors out there. Is there an arbitrage opportunity . Or what is the trade if you want to, for instance, a futures contract right now is based on gemini and the price difference between coinbases system and gemini is a couple thousand bucks. How do you take advantage of that is there a way you can take your coins from, lets just say you bought it or you have it on coinbase and geminis trading at a higher price. You can transfer your coins from coinbase to gemini and sell it there. Its because im not doing it myself it sounds very complicated. It is. It is no, im saying like on a daily basis, to be doing whatever youre doing and getting it from gemini to coinbase, back to i dont know where im just trying to understand what this is all about here. It is, again, this is early its deep end of the pool. Its not easy. Its hard. Its going to get better there are networks that are coming out like the cosmos network, thats going to allow you quickly to move things around. Where do you keep your bitcoin . In cold storage. Okay, see, this is where it gets complicated explain that. What is cold storage . It means its on a device thats not connected to the internet. So its effectively a thumb drive. Okay, so a thumb drive youre taking it off. And are you carrying it around do you have some on you right now . I do not. You put it in a safe . I put it in a safe. And you have duplicate copies i have triplicates in three different locations in disasterproof safes. And every day theyre copying the latest all my datas stored on the blockchain, which is essentially in the cloud so all i need is my private key. As soon as i plug my private key in, all my information pops up. I think its an important point to say that as investors, a lot of investors are used to being compensated for taking different types of risks, illiquidity risk or duration, whatever it is here you have operational complexity and you have quirkiness thats very real, but investors are well compensated do you keep your bitcoin under a bed . Ill echo what brian just said. Cold storage. Keeping it off of a laptop or negate all points of failure. Are you following this, joseph that was one of my questions, that if we get the big pulse, the ent, whatever it is that kim jonguns going to fry the server. And everything goes away, i thought id rather have gold and ammo, in a Zombie Apocalypse listen, there will be things more valuable than bitcoin if that happens, right . Yeah like ammo, right, absolutely but you know what, if you have any type of communication, any type of radio or satellite where theyre putting satellites up there, youre going to be able to get it. So you know, youre going to shave off a little bit of gold i dont think they have they have ive seen walkie talkies, but its very sparse, the communication. Right, right. But i mean, listen, you know, are you going to have your stocks are you going to shave off a little bit of your stocks to pay for food ets, or for any bad situation, im at the border trying to get out and im saying, i swear, i own this gold i do look, heres my statement exactly. It might be better to have the paper leafs. And listen, if youre comfortable with holding guns and ammo in your own cold storage, go for it its not c