* Chicago bitcoin futures launch, trade at premium to Bitstamp
* Fed expected to hike this week; ECB, BoE seen standing pat
* Sterling steadies but off post-Brexit accord highs
By Lisa Twaronite
TOKYO, Dec 11 (Reuters) - The dollar probed four-week highs against the yen on Monday, underpinned by expectations of higher U.S. interest rates, while bitcoin seized the spotlight as futures of the cryptocurrency began trading.
U.S. employment data on Friday showed a bigger rise in jobs than expected in November, but the dollar's gains were capped by disappointing wage data that analysts said could weigh on the pace of interest rate hikes next year.
Bitcoin was up 7.6 percent at $15,755.08 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
The first bitcoin futures began trading at 6 p.m. (2300 GMT) on CBOE Global Markets Inc's CBOE.O CBOE Futures Exchange. The futures are cash-settled contracts based on the auction price of bitcoin in U.S. dollars on the Gemini Exchange, which is owned and operated by virtual currency entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
The most-traded futures contract opened at $15,460 before leaping to a high of $18,700 - a gain of 21 percent. They last stood at $17,770.
The acting governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand on Sunday said bitcoin appeared to be a "classic case" of a bubble.
"With a bubble you never know how far it is going to go before it comes around," Grant Spencer told TVNZ.
Investors continued to weigh the gist of Spencer's remarks and assess whether the cryptocurrency was in a bubble that was in danger of bursting, even as some charged ahead with positions.
"Regardless of what side of the debate you're on, what's undeniable is that the current euphoria and the extreme levels of price volatility offer the brave of heart some excellent speculative opportunities," Stephen Innes, head of Asian trading at currency broker Oanda said in a note to clients.
FED HIKE EXPECTED THIS WEEK
The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates at its two-day policy meeting that will end on Wednesday, and is seen as possibly tightening two or three times in 2018. But still-sluggish inflation has clouded next year's policy outlook.
"There is a consensus that the Fed will hike this week, so what investors are most interested in is any clue as to what it will do next year, and the pace of interest rate increases," said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.
Against its Japanese counterpart, the dollar edged up 0.1 percent to 113.59 yen, probing levels last touched in mid-November.