Bakkt BTC futures contract hit a new record volume

Bakkt physically-settled BTC futures contract hit a new volume record yesterday. The platform saw a demand of $4.5 Million volume in the Bakkt BTC futures contract. Till now the total futures contract executed in Bakkt’s platform stand at approx. $20 Million, an average per day of $0.89 Million since its inception on Sept 23.

A total of 590 BTC of Bakkt monthly futures contract was traded on Oct 23, closing the day at the price of $7490 per Bitcoin. Nearly 3 times more volume than the previous highest of approx 212 BTC on Oct 9.

The rise in volume does not represent growing interest among institutional investors. As of today, so far 107 BTC worth of Bitcoin futures contract volume has traded in the Bakkt platform. Source: ICE live feed. Upward continued momentum is needed to confirm institutional investors’ interest.

Most regulated futures contracts take time to build momentum as not all brokers are ready to clear them. Just like a few days of trading isn’t representative of the long term potential of the platform, similarly, a day spike does not represent the start of growing interest.

So what caused this spike?

Bitcoin’s price yesterday dropped to its lowest level in 5 months.

The shock wave in a single hour liquidated near $188.5 million of XBT Perpetual Swap contracts on BitMEX derivatives exchange.

No surprise, the rise of volume in Bakkt is most likely attributed to yesterday’s BTC price drop to $7350 level, possibly to hedge against the risk of adverse Bitcoin price movement.