That sole title may make proponents of Bitcoin make waves of contentment, whereas those that are more skeptical of the cryptocurrency (or cryptocurrencies in general) will likely find themselves shaking their heads in dismay. Whether you're on one of those camps, or Bitcoin is just indifferent for you, the fact that a cryptocurrency has made its way to a bona fide exchange should likely mean one thing: Bitcoin's valuation is only ever more likely to increase now.

Futures trading is one of the wildest, less material forms of trading, since the actual property of the item whose futures you're investing into never becomes yours. Instead, futures trading is more akin to betting, where investors gauge the expected value of a product in the future. A futures trader may invest in the price of rice in China, the expected value of shares for a given company, the value of a fiat currency... And now, the value of bitcoin. Usually, the best futures traders make their decisions based on actual real world data that might affect their investment. The thing here that might propel Bitcoin's value upwards, is that we're already seeing the effect this futures trading has brought upon Bitcoin. Remember that Nicehash hack that resulted in the theft of a puny $68M? Well, historically, hacks in cryptocurrencies have brought about plummeting value, as investors knee-jerk and cash-out before the same can happen to them (among other variables). However, the hype from Bitcoin being traded in an exchange has been so great in the past few weeks that the Nicehash hack didn't register as so much as a blip in Bitcoin's value, in the grand scheme of things. It's just kept on increasing.The thing with futures trading is that it takes the initial pricing of Bitcoin as a baseline, almost setting it in amber. Bitcoin futures (XBT) valuation will reinforce street pricing of Bitcoin, in such a way that predicting Bitcoin's pricing to be at $18,600 per Bitcoin with an expiration of January 17th 2018 (as they currently are), will increase the likelihood of an increasing valuation of Bitcoin up to that moment. It's really circular thinking - and now there's another way for investors to accrue value from bitcoin, while skirting the risk and hassles of actually holding the coin. In fact, traders can now even short the cryptocurrency - but your mileage may vary on the results obtained from that one move.Whatever your opinion of Bitcoin or crypto in general, this futures trading in one of New York's foremost exchanges is bound to bring increased legitimacy to the cryptocurrency, as is being hailed as a sign of maturity for the cryptocurrency ecosystem at large.