The launch of Ethereum futures trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange is likely to have a negative impact on the ETH price, but it may weaken the bearish pressure on bitcoin, the analyst believes.

Tomas Lee, managing partner of Fundstrat Global Advisors, believes that futures, tied to the price of Ether, can change the situation in the cryptocurrency market. If in December 2017, after the start of bitcoin futures trading, the price of bitcoin went down due to the arrival of shortists on the market, then the appearance of ETH futures will divert the attention of bears from bitcoin, and will allow the first cryptocurrency to start growing again.

"Since December of this year, if one was bearish on any aspect of crypto but did not want to own the underlying, they could short btc," Lee said. "They can now short eth, means the net short on btc in futures would fall."

Thus, the Ethereum price risks to be under greater pressure of bears and fall even more. This happened with bitcoin, which, after touching nearly $20,000 in December 2017, returned to $7,000, largely due to shortists, prevailing in the cryptocurrency futures market.

Witnessing the growing demand for bitcoin futures, CBOE, the largest options and futures exchange in the US, decided to launch Ethereum futures before the end of 2018, Business Insider reports citing a source close to the discussion.

Currently, CBOE is consulting with the US Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC) and is waiting for the final approval to launch new cryptocurrency futures. But unlike bitcoin, which since 2015 is classified by the regulator as a commodity, Ethereum was the subject of a dispute as to whether it is a security.

When calculating the price of the contract, CBOE will take the Ethereum rate on the US-based crypto exchange Gemini as a basis. Gemini also provides CBOE with data on bitcoin price to calculate the price of bitcoin futures.