You may find the process described in the last chapter too complicated or too risky. Maybe you don't want to buy Bitcoins yourself or pay with them, but just speculate on the exchange rate of the Bitcoin currency. With real currencies, this has long been established in the form of currency speculation, around which a very risky market called forex trading ( foreign exchange market ) has developed. You now have the option of speculating on the Bitcoin exchange rate via normal stock exchange trading with an online broker. The first stock exchange products have been established for this purpose, which belgium telegram screening can be traded via a conventional bank deposit. There are plans to significantly expand the number and types of these stock exchange products in the future [5] .
Since the end of 2017, Bitcoin futures can also be traded on regular exchanges.
Possible products include unsecured open-end ETNs ( exchange-traded notes ) [6] , which reflect the exchange rate between Bitcoins and US dollars (XBT/USD) in fixed ratios. The addition of open-end means that the product has no term limit, i.e. it is not necessarily paid out on a fixed date. With an unsecured certificate, the product traded in the certificate is not actually purchased, but deposited with a trustee. This reduces administration costs, but if the product provider defaults on payment - as happened in the case of Lehman Brothers - you have no right to repayment; you may therefore lose your entire assets.
Similar products are now also available for Ethereum (ETH), a competitor to Bitcoin. Ethereum is considered the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization [7] . The question is how many and which exchange products will exist for cryptocurrencies in the future and for which cryptocurrencies these will be.
For example, there are also plans to offer an ETF ( exchange-traded fund ) for bitcoins that can be freely traded on the stock exchanges , where "real" bitcoins are purchased as collateral. In principle, this could be achieved via full replication or via swap transactions [8] . However, these plans have not yet been implemented [9] .