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Well, it was a little anti-climatic.
After two years of work and more than a year of hype and regulatory deadlines, the Bakkt bitcoin futures market has had a dull first trading day.
On Monday at the close of business at 22:00 UTC, only two daily futures contracts and 71 monthly futures contracts were traded on the new platform, built by Intercontinental Exchange's parent company on the New York Stock Exchange. The first daily contract was not even negotiated before 18 hours after the launch at midnight.
In spite of this, Adam White, the former CEO of Coinbase who became COO of Bakkt, seemed optimistic.
He said in Julia Chatterly interview with CNN The launch of ICE futures meant "for the first time ever, you have a regulated end-to-end market for discovering the price of bitcoin".
White hopes that daily and futures contracts will lead to price discovery, and while the focus is on the (up to now unrealized) potential of the institutional currency to enter the market. Space through Bakkt, White has opened the door to private investors. , saying:
"Bakkt is really designed for the institutional trader. So, this is a futures contract. That being said, we expect this futures contract to be traded through retail brokers, so that retail customers can negotiate this contract. "
He also noted that ICE was working on Bakkt and the futures contract "for more than two years". (The project was released for the first time in the summer of 2018.)
The demand may, however, be slow to increase.
In his own statement to CNBC's Closing Bell, Heath Tarbert, the new chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), also touched on the issue of cryptocurrencies, noting that while demand for commodities Crypto derivatives is increasing, " [what] we see for other classes of products. "
Halving
Bakkt first revealed that he would offer operators a monthly contract in May, the same day he announced that he had self-certified his contracts with the CFTC.
White said Monday that Bakkt's monthly contract spans 12 months, which means that traders will likely be able to predict the price of bitcoin over a year.
"This is important, not only for speculators, but for companies that rely on the price of bitcoin – the miners are the companies that exploit bitcoin – want to cover their risks, so we think this contract suits them perfectly," he explained.
Contracts could also help predict the price movement of Bitcoin in the months leading up to its next halving, the quadrennial event in which the number of bitcoins generated every 10 minutes is cut in half. -he adds.
"With that, you see a decrease in supply if the demand remains the same very often, the price increases. We believe it is an important element of the futures contract because it helps companies discover what the fair market value of bitcoin will be through such events. "
The next halving of bitcoins is scheduled for May 2020.
The monthly and daily Bakkt contracts are each settled to a hair less than $ 9,900, well above spot market prices, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.
Image Adam White via CoinDesk Archive
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