Ignoring Outages, Coinbase Futures Set Record Highs as Bitcoin Rally Continues

Pre-public offering futures for leading U.S.-exchange Coinbase hit $311 Thursday on derivatives exchange FTX amid bitcoin‘s parabolic price rally and despite Coinbase’s ongoing “connectivity issues.”

• The exchange suffered "connectivity issues" for six hours yesterday, with the same problem resurfacing today. The company said it is working to implement a fix in its latest status page's incident report.
• At their launch, Coinbase futures previously topped out just above $295.
• Notably, FTX's CBSE futures market is still quite small, reporting roughly $33,000 in 24-hour volume.
• Bitcoin ripped through $39,000 for the first time ever late Thursday morning, recording an over 30% gain already in 2021 following its more than 300% rally last year.
• FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told CoinDesk in mid December his team was working to get legal clarity from non-U.S. regulators before launching the market.
• Coinbase futures soared 140% in their first hour of trading a few days later.
• In mid December, Coinbase filed preliminary documents ahead of a planned public offering, tapping Goldman Sachs to lead the listing days later.