The Intercontinental Exchange and its highly anticipated BTC futures contract have had a fabulous week. As we can see from the latest cryptocurrency news, Bakkt hits $5 million in its first week of Bitcoin futures trading – and the daily product traded fewer than five contracts over the course of this first week.
According to the Bakkt division of the ICE exchange, this means that we can expect even larger numbers in the future. The reports show that around 623 monthly Bitcoin futures contracts changed hands last week. As you probably know, both of the monthly and daily contracts debuted on September 23.
Meanwhile, each of Bakkt’s futures contracts represents one Bitcoin. Therefore, the total trading volume shows that Bakkt hits $5 million, based on the current price of around $8,400 as the Bitcoin news now show. By comparison, around 4,099 BTC futures contracts traded on Friday alone at the rival Chicago-based exchange operator CME – with a trading volume of around $165 million on the single day.
Even though Bakkt’s daily futures fared even more poorly (and fewer than 6 contracts changed hands throughout the first week), executives think that this is still a good milestone for the industry, catering to big institutional investors which have been slow to buy Bitcoin and other digital assets.
As the ICE said, the new offering should appeal to institutional investors like hedge funds and other money managers. The exchange believes that this is the case because BTC must be delivered to fulfill the contract’s terms when the maturity date arrives.
Dave Weisberger, who is the CEO of CoinRoutes, says that Bitcoin investors currently in the market already have plenty of places to buy and sell. However, it is too early to write off Bakkt’s new push.
“It takes time for people to move from one place to another, unless there’s a cost reason or a liquidity reason,” Weisberger noted, stating that “These things tend to develop slowly.”
As Bakkt hits $5 million in its first week of Bitcoin futures trading, we can only see good comments in the industry. According to Damon Leavell who is a spokesman for ICE, the company believes that there is “strong industry participation” during the first week of the new Bitcoin contract.
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