Why is BTC on CME trading at a price premium to CBOE BTC?

R

rolando87

Anyone know? From what I can tell it's not a risk free arb because spreads are wide as hell on CME right now.

CME is on the left, tried to line up the offers, tick sizes are different if you look closely.
 

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Yeah i knew that but it's not like the contract collects interest. Also cboe February futures is still lower then CME"s January futures price. So that doesn't explain it.

So seems to me that's there more to it. Maybe some kind of premium for buying 5 BTCat once but I don't think its that either.
 
CBOE was also in massive premium compared to spot price. I think these two new futures will need some time for liquidity and arbitrageurs to close it in.
 
Although both the CBOE contract http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures/contract-specifications and the CME contract are "Bitcoin futures", there are many differences between the two contracts.
The main difference is that the CBOE contract is based on the price at Gemini, whereas the CME price is based on the BRR. http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin_contract_specifications.html
If the BRR is different to the Gemini price, then it follows that the CME contract will trade at a different price to the CBOE contract.




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rolando87 said:
Yea I get the premium in futures vs spot but futures vs futures?
More...
Without being an actual crypto trader, I'd guess that different settlement models might be a part of explanation (CME averages exchanges, while CBOE uses an auction on a single exchange, AFAIK)
 
OK that's making more sense thanks for digging that up. What about the margin requirements, CME's seems to be more than CBOE's (on a per BTC basis). Not sure how that would affect trading price if its more expensive to buy or sell in terms of margin. I feel like margin expense should in theory make it worth less than CBOE but it's the opposite.
 
At least at cboe futures premium over spot was all over the place anywhere from 4% to 8% . Didnt look much like efficient price discovery. Then again spot btc doesnt either.
 
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