It seems that the now-infamous China pump of 2019 has awoken something in Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures. On the day of the jaw-dropping 42% pump last week, the exchange’s futures saw more than $10 million worth of volume traded, a new all-time high for the fledgling market.
Since then, this volume has persisted.
Bitcoin Futures Market Swelling Again
According to a report from Bakkt Volume Bot, a Twitter robot dedicated to following trends in its namesake’s Bitcoin market, Tuesday was an extremely strong day for Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures, with the market processing over $10 million worth of contracts, 1060 BTC worth, in fact. This marks a 96% increase from the day prior.
https://twitter.com/BakktBot/status/1191976041935441921
This is the latest multi-million dollar volume day that Bakkt has seen over the past few weeks, as the exchange has finally got its ball rolling with the customer onboarding and liquidity providing incentives. As The Block’s Frank Chaparro observed:
Big pop on October 23, a day after Bakkt filed for a liquidity incentive program rule change (to begin on Nov 1) to boost volumes. To qualify, firms had to have a “demonstrated” ability, meaning they had to start trading prior to Nov 1
Regardless of the exact reasoning behind this volume, many have addressed Bakkt’s growing metrics in a positive light.
As Bakkt’s volume has spiked, a report from Skew Markets has found that institutional longs on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Bitcoin futures market have hit a one-month high, reaching around 1,300 BTC worth of contracts. This is up by over five times from the bottom near 250 BTC seen in late-September.
ICE CEO Optimistic About Bakkt’s
Bakkt’s strong past ten days comes as the chief executive of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the firm behind the New York Stock Exchange and much of the crypto upstart’s operations, made an optimistic comment.
According to fellow industry publication The Block, in the financial institution’s latest earnings call, Jeffrey Sprecher noted in response to a question regarding Bakkt that there is high institutional demand for Bitcoin derivatives products, as that is a way to gain exposure to Bitcoin in a way that is compliant with U.S. regulators:
“All [kinds] of financial institutions are talking to us and looking at this and trying to figure out where this fits and what the global regulators are going to think about this and so on and so forth. So there’s a tremendous amount of dialogue around it.”
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