After having recently only just recently announced that it would be the first brokerage to offer binary options on bitcoin, IG markets revealed to one of our reporters at the recent iFXEXPO that it would be dropping bitcoin from its roster of tradable assets when the final option expires on July 15th of this year. Mind you the news did not come as part as some official announcement from the IG booth, but rather came as a result of our posing the question and cheekily insisting that it be answered. The IG Markets representative merely stated that the company had decided to not renew any bitcoin contracts after the last expiry this coming July.
Bitcoin trades were adopted by IG Markets earlier this year when the Bitcoin digital currency exploded all over the mainstream and independent media. IG Markets by being the first to offer binary trades on bitcoin garnered a great deal of publicity for the company and for its binary options derivatives, but why the u-turn so swiftly? All the company representative would say in response to this question was that bitcoin binary options trades had been discontinued due to “management decisions”. This could be as a result of the great volatility swings that bitcoin is subject to on a regular basis, making bitcoin options increasingly hard for the companies risk analysis departments to price. Another reason for this rapid change of policy is the degree to which bitcoin has been in the crosshairs of the authorities of late, with money laundering being an accusation increasingly leveled at the new currency. Whether true or not, it has certainly dampened IG Markets’ ardour for the new currency. But then again, that’s how good PR works, right? Stand as close as possible to what is generating headlines, and then slowly ease away when the tide begins to turn.
This will now leave binary options brokerage Anyoption to be the only binary broker in the industry still offering binary bitcoin derivatives as you can see in our previous post about AnyOption and Bitcoin.
