In response to popular pressure from clients, forex and CFDs broker HYCM have announced that they have added the BTC-USD pairing to their list of traded financial instruments. The decision comes during a period of increased cryptocurrency engagement on the part of major financial institutions.
Also Read: Coincheck Reopens Lending Service with 11 More Cryptocurrencies
The Number of CFD Brokers Offering Bitcoin Derivative Products Is Growing
HYCM is a popular forex and CFDs trading broker that offers products to retail and institutional investors. The firm is part of the Henyep Capital Markets Group, an international corporation that has offices in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Cyprus, and Dubai. The group is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, Dubai Financial Service Authority, and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission.
The interest that HYCM is taking in bitcoin trading is yet another example of mainstream financial institutions attempting to cash in on bitcoin’s meteoric rise.
Cryptocurrency Tentatively Edges Toward Mainstream Adoption
The embedding of cryptocurrency into the mainstream world of financial technology is not playing out as many cryptocurrency pundits expected during bitcoin’s infancy. The recent slew of national governments announcing their experimentation with blockchain is a far cry to the utopian proposals of bitcoin and cryptocurrency governance that once flooded the bitcoin forums. It would appear that Russia, China, Singapore, among other nations, are seeking to develop distributed ledgers through which to issue national currencies. Said projects appear to have all of the transparency of bitcoin, and none of the centralization – signposting that governments are seeking to utilize cryptocurrency technology to create the most invasive and privacy-eroding money commodity in history. With the example of Singapore, business heavyweights Deloitte have partnered with the government, comprising a likely example of how the contemporary state-finance nexus may seek to manifest within the cryptocurrency sphere.
Mainstream financial institutions such as HYCM offering bitcoin-based products may appear beneficial to the cryptocurrency community at first glance, as successful financial institutions entering bitcoin will expose cryptocurrency to new audiences. The risk, however, is that the underground cryptocurrency community may have persevered the trials and tribulations of bitcoin’s development, only for the technology to get handed on a platter to the financial industry to profit – reinforcing the dominance of the financial oligarchy that bitcoin originally sought to undermine.
Do you think that CFD bitcoin markets undermine bitcoin’s core value proposition? Share your thoughts below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and HYCM
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.
