LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin climbed to a new all-time high of $6,450 on Wednesday, boosted by bets the cryptocurrency could enter the financial mainstream after the world's largest derivatives exchange operator said on Tuesday it would launch bitcoin futures.
CME Group Inc <CME.O> said it would provide a regulated trading venue for the cryptocurrency market and would launch the new derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Bitcoin has had a bumper year with a more than sixfold increase in price, and has more than doubled in price since mid-September alone.
It was up 0.3 percent on Wednesday on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange <BTC=BTSP>.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly, Editing by Abhinav Ramnarayan)
