After all the fanfare, fevered anticipation, and breathless media coverage, Bakkt’s launch of bitcoin futures on Monday was a damp squib. Despite the rollout of physically delivered BTC futures going without a hitch, volumes were low, while the less said about bitcoin’s price in the aftermath, the better. Despite this inauspicious start, however, there is cause for confidence in the future of bitcoin futures.
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Never Mind the Bakkt Lapse
Whether it was priced in to begin with, or never even factored into the reckoning of traders, few would dispute that Bakkt’s launch of bitcoin futures was anticlimactic. In the event, only 71 BTC was placed into contracts on Bakkt’s opening day, but as sanguine heads pointed out, Bakkt should be judged in a year – not a day. By that time, Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt platform will have been complemented by CME’s introduction of bitcoin options, which are scheduled to arrive in early 2020. The derivatives marketplace announced last week that it would be adding “additional tools for precision hedging and trading” of BTC. All going to plan, BCH futures will also be debuting on a CFTC-regulated exchange around the same time.
John Jansen is the CEO of crypto derivatives exchange Deribit. He told news.Bitcoin.com: “With Bakkt’s physically delivered futures now live, and CME’s bitcoin options on their way, it’s essentially a waiting game for demand to pick up. Some retail investors have been laboring under the misconception that institutional adoption will jumpstart the crypto market, but the reality is far more nuanced. At Deribit, institutional interest has been growing steadily all year, with
