I don't like futures for Bitcoin or Ethereum. Because they integrate the current economic system with blockchain. More precisely, they transfer the bad aspects of the current economy to the blockchain economy. Bitcoin is limited. So it is valuable.
NOT like any of us can really do anything about the existence or NON-existence of such products. Right? Good to be aware of these kinds of products to the extent that they might be used to affect, control or manipulate price... or attempted to be used for such.
Actually there is, we can choose to not participate in the dilution of the asset class.
We can also educate those that ask this same question why these unsettled "liquidity supplying, volatility squashing" markets should not be supported but rather the asset itself purchased and held.
Every coin being rolled over in house in these clearing houses is one less actually being bought on chain and that is a direct dilution of the cap.
Think of if no-one had herded to Walmart as was forewarned by so many of us..
Ok. Fair enough.
I surely remain quite skeptical of these various products to the extent that they represent actual bitcoins, and I really have my doubts regarding the level of their being backed up by actual bitcoins. Sure, some of them claim to have bitcoin and others don't even claim to be backed up by bitcoins.
I do accept that there is some value in directly buying bitcoins and directly holding them, so I expect that at some points in our bitcoin future, there are going to be tests of the value of actually having your bitcoins and whether there might end up being some denigration of some of those products because the dynamics in manipulating bitcoin is different from manipulating a market like gold - in terms of at least how easily one can demand possession of millions of dollars of bitcoin and actual act upon such demand (within minutes - maybe 10 minutes to get a confirmation and an hour or so to be able to retransmit the value that you have taken into your possession), whereas the logistics to demand millions of dollars of gold and to verify it is a lot more cumbersome.