Earlier today, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) backed startup, Bakkt finally launched trading on its long-awaited physically-delivered bitcoin futures products targeting institutional investors who want to get exposure to the emerging asset class.
Basking in the euphoria of that milestone, Adam White, Bakkt’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) spoke with CNN correspondent, Julia Chatterley on what the development means for the crypto industry and why they chose to launch only bitcoin futures products for a start.
According to White, the new products will greatly improve price discovery for bitcoin, giving the reportedly inflated trading volumes seen on most unregulated spot exchanges.
He also agreed that newly launched contracts could possibly provide the opportunity for people to understand market sentiments around the price of bitcoin during significant milestones such as the upcoming halving event.
Next, Adam White commented on their decision to only launch futures contracts for Bitcoin instead of other cryptocurrencies out there.
We are starting with Bitcoin because we talked to our customers and that’s what they want to trade. We also see real utility happening on the Bitcoin network [commerce]. There are many thousands of businesses that accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.
Conclusively, the Bakkt COO noted that they will still do a lot on the payments side to “provide real utility and value to Bitcoin,” and will not be phased by any competition that suffices in these early days of the industry.
The impending launch of bitcoin futures products by other asset managers such as ErisX, SeedCX and LedgerX is healthy competition for Bakkt according to Adam White.
