Not if you're thinking that the futures participants will be leaning on the options markets. The options market makers will bid and offer with a wider spread than the futures - look at just about any options on futures market. Options market makers are going to lean on first the futures and then the cash market - and will be wider than both of course.
While I agree with your sentiment broadly, I think this particular number, which I've seen as well, is a bit of hyperbole. I'm thinking the real number or real funds is a fraction of that.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/the...20-hedge-funds-focused-solely-on-bitcoin.html That's where I got that info. I think many of those funds are in the private equity space and are funding blockchain companies vs actually trading the BTC itself.
That's been my conclusion combing through the literature as well. Blockchain has more growth potential than BTC as an individual instrument. Some really really big industrials are going all in on blockchain - same can't be said for BTC at the moment.
I agree, and I think they play a little loose with the "focused solely" title vs what the funds are actually doing. I also have to wonder about 32% of 120 funds (38.4) having $700M in AUM, which gives an average AUM of $18M, or more likely a couple $100M funds and a bunch of sub $10M funds which isn't really a viable size for anything other than a guy in his home office calling himself a hedge fund.
Section 5 and all subchapters there is a worry. Does the CME know what it is getting into? This seems unchartered territory for them http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/files/bitcoin-reference-rate-methodology.pdf?
No, there isn't, and I would bet there won't be one this year either. If the CME said 2 months that will be 5 at least. Also, I wonder how they will determine the value of BTC, are they going to average 3-5 brokers like the Winklewii wanted to do? Edit: I see in the pdf file they calculate volume weighted average of some brokers.They also included the math what the Winklewii had as a secret souce. "The BRR is calculated based on the Relevant Transactions of all Constituent Exchanges."