Investors have only bought $600.000 worth of bitcoin futures from Bakkt in the first 24 hours. Investors bought only 71 BTC into monthly contracts on the platform. For many this is reason to doubt the power of the bitcoin futures, but Su Zhu from investment firm Three Arrows Capital believes the flood is yet to come.
“Bakkt will be likely first a trickle and then a flood. The reality is that most regulated futures contracts get low adoption on day one simply because not all futures brokers are ready to clear it, many people want to wait and see, the tickers are not even populated on risk systems, etc.”
Su Zhu, CEO of Three Arrows Capital, on Twitter (September 23rd 2019)
A day before launching the futures platform, Bakkt was already cautious with its predictions. They said it would likely take weeks or even months to find out how eager institutional investors are in betting on bitcoin. The Bakkt futures are physically settled in bitcoin. As a result investors will receive an actual bitcoin when the contracts expire.
With futures trading you're betting on an increase in value over time. Because the platform settles the contracts in bitcoin, there's an actual demand for the cryptocurrency. Obviously 63 BTC is not the amount many were expecting.
Bitcoin futures delayed a lot
Bakkt already had plans for its Bitcoin Futures since 2018. Their plans have been postponed over and over. At the same time NASDAQ is also looking into the possibility to launch bitcoin futures.
At the same time their are more financial companies looking to include bitcoin. For now the Bitcoin ETF by VanEck and SolidX has been delayed, because they got tired of the never ending delays by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Posted from my blog: https://www.nederob.nl/2019/09/24/bakkt-will-bring-a-flood-of-bitcoin-futures/