The Bakkt bitcoin futures platform is up and running

After months and months of waiting, actually we are close to a year at this point, the first Bakkt bitcoin futures trade went off.

It was for the month of October and was executed at 8:02pm EST at a price of $10,115, for one contract.

A milestone for the company and the entire crypto industry.

Overall, Bakkt announced that they are now trading live on ICE Futures U.S. while they also continue to take on more bitcoin in their warehousing service.

A couple interesting observation thus far...

According to Bakkt, their Bitcoin Monthly Futures contract had the tightest bid/offer spreads in the Oct’19 futures contract on its first day of trading on ICE Futures U.S.

https://twitter.com/Bakkt/status/1176231124680548353

So far, the bitcoin prices are almost identical at ICE/Bakkt and the CME:

(Source: https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1176114339834675200)

As expected, the volumes are fairly light thus far.

As of 4 hours before the market closes, only $550,000 worth of BTC futures have changed hands.

Low volumes are not a cause for concern

I wouldn't be too concerned about the low volumes just yet as I am sure many are going to let the dust settle for a bit before they get involved.

We saw the CME volumes slowly ramp up the longer they traded, though admittedly they did trade much higher volumes on their first day, but there is likely a good reason for that...

Considering that actual bitcoins will change hands, there are still many institutions that may not have clearance to trade these products, which means the volume may stay lower than the CME for some time.

More about Bakkt's plans and why this launch is important can be seen here:

https://medium.com/bakkt-blog/we-have-liftoff-an-important-milestone-for-the-industry-7b9843fb53eb

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc