…As EIB accused of marring EU climate goals with €1.5bn gas pipeline loan***
Bitcoin has begun trading on a major exchange for the first time in what is being regarded as a step towards legitimising the digital currency.
Trading opened at 23:00 GMT Sunday on the Cboe Futures Exchange in Chicago, valuing Bitcoin at $15,000.
The currency’s futures were volatile for the first 20 minutes, rising to about $16,600 before dropping back.
Bob Fitzsimmons at Wedbush Securities said about 150 trades were made in the first few minutes: “It’s quiet.”
The Cboe’s move is expected to be followed next week by a rival listing on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Anticipation of the first mainstream listings have helped the controversial currency soar past $10,000 and then over $17,000 on Thursday before retreating. Bitcoin was trading at about $15,230 on Monday, according to Coindesk.com.
Nick Colas, of Data Trek research, said the futures listings gave Bitcoin “legitimacy – it recognises that it’s an asset you can trade”.
Futures are a type of derivative contract that allows trading based on movements in Bitcoin prices, without requiring ownership of the currency itself.
The start of the Cboe market was low key, with “no champagne”, an exchange insider said.
However, Cboe tweeted to warn that its website was running slowly and could be temporarily unavailable, but that all trading systems were operating normally.
In the meantime, the EU’s bank has come under fire for moves towards approving a €1.5bn (£1.3bn) loan for a gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to western Europe as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, prepared to hosted a climate change summit in Paris.
Campaigners said the European Investment Bank, which is expected to support the transadriatic pipeline (TAP) with one of its largest ever loans on Tuesday, was acting against the EU’s climate change commitments.
The bank has been privately urged by the EU’s climate and energy chiefs to approve the loan because the project’s backers “need to urgently secure adequate funding” as they enter a capital-intensive construction phase.
But opponents of the plan said that approving the loan on the second anniversary of the Paris climate deal being agreed would be an affront to Europe’s efforts to curb carbon emissions.
“The EU, which considers itself a climate action champion, simply cannot afford its financial arm, the EIB, supporting any component of the southern gas corridor,” said Xavier Sol, the director of Counter Balance, an alliance of European NGOs.
The timing is sensitive for Macron, who has convened a special summit in Paris on Tuesday to explore ways of financing projects to tackle climate change.
The TAP is the westernmost section of the southern gas corridor, a series of pipelines transporting gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe.
BBC with additional report from Guardian UK
