Bitcoin futures at 5 BTC per contract: what to watch on margin and the expiry date

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always conduct your own research.A Bitcoin future gives you a price and a date, not coins. What contract size, margin and expiry on the last Friday of the month mean for your account, and why the route to the futures market in Germany runs through the broker.A Bitcoin future is a bet on a price at a fixed date, and it is not Bitcoin. You buy no coins; you enter a contract. On a set day, the difference between your entry price and the settlement price is paid out. Grasp that and you grasp the rest of this article, because every further term hangs on those two sentences. What counts here is less the price forecasts than contract size, margin and the expiry date. At the CME Group, the standard contract on Bitcoin covers five coins. At a price of $82,230, the level on Friday morning according to CoinGecko, a single one of those contracts carries a notional value of $411,150. That is the amount you command, not the amount you deposit. Everything instructive and everything dangerous about futures sits in that gap. Wh...