Bitcoin Is A Hit On Wall Street

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CHICAGO (AP) -- The first-ever futures contract for the digital currency bitcoin closed Monday at $18,545, ending its initial day of trading with a 20 percent gain.

The bitcoin futures contract that expires in January rose as high as $18,850, according to data from Cboe Global Markets.

The futures allow investors to bet on the direction of bitcoin, but do not involve actual bitcoin.

The Cboe's competitor exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will start trading its own futures on Dec. 18.

So far, bitcoin is a hit on Wall Street.

Bitcoin has exploded in popularly and volatility this year. This is the first time bitcoin futures have traded on a major U.S. exchange.

The futures allow investors to bet on the direction of bitcoin, but do not involve actual bitcoin.

The CBOE futures are securities that will track the price of bitcoin on Gemini, one of the larger bitcoin exchanges.

It opened at 5 p.m. CST at $15,000 and climbed as high as $18,700 in its first day of trading, according to CBOE Global Markets.

The traffic to the CBOE Futures Exchange website after start of trading overwhelmed the site.

"Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable," the exchange said in a statement.

But it said the trading in the futures had not been disrupted.