Bitcoin Forum

We were all waiting eagerly for its release and since it launched its Bitcoin options on December 9, a wave of happiness was spread among everyone that now BTC will be moon, now we will lambo and what not. But, what happened defines a very different story and we can't deny how badly the last 10 days went for Bakkt when zero trading volume knocked their doors.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/54294/bakkts-bitcoin-options-saw-zero-volume-last-week

Go there and read, how calmly the ICE's spokesperson said during a recent interview that Bakkt continues to see “strong” interest in both its bitcoin options and futures products.

If that is the case, why their working product is yet not being used since 10 days and why the volume of institutional investors is so low at Bakkt compared to CME futures?

Yeah, that sounded like a typical public relations statement putting a spin on a bad situation and I wouldn't put much faith in it.

Very interesting.  I was among those who thought Bakkt would boom once launched, because I'd figured that hedge funds and other big-money investors would want in on the crypto game, and the only good way to do that would be through futures and options.  Apparently the reception is tepid at best, and I'm kind of surprised to see that.

Even the volume on the CME seems pretty low.  I've no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but my guess is that if business doesn't pick up on Bakkt, they'll shut their doors.

We are made to believe that once there can be a Bakkt platform then institutional investors will be coming in like an avalanche, and we can witness Bitcoin to boom and bloom like a lively garden of roses. Eventually, we realized that we were just hyped. The market of Bakkt is not responding well and there are more chances that this can go under the ground if this platform is not saved from its eventual extinction. Now, I am wondering if Bakkt is going to fail what will it mean to Bitcoin? Does it mean that actually institutional investors are not really into Bitcoin or are they looking for another form of an infrastructure like an ETF maybe?

My theory is institutional investors prefer other futures and options exchanges because they use the price of BTC on few unregulated and unmonitored exchanges to make the settlements. While Bakkt is making the settlements with its own price. Bakkt is regulated and monitored with circuit breakers (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/circuitbreaker.asp), etc, and is only used by professional traders, so manipulating the price there is much harder.

The claim that a large number of institutional investors are interested into buying Bitcoin futures was just hype and propaganda.The Bakkt hype is over and I couldn't care less about this project.
Bitcoin core is strong, with or without Bakkt.We should never rely on the mercy of a bunch of institutional investors to pump/dump the price.We already have crypto whales,which is the sad truth. :(
Only mass adoption will liberate the bitcoin price from manipulations.
 

I mean, who would admit that their services offered are receiving zero returns and notice right? It's all public relation matters to entice the masses but should be more specifically catered to those investors and higher-ups of theirs, while those at the center of the project themselves bust their asses to try and fix the problem at hand.


Considering that they both entered the options scene, CME is way too ahead of Bakkt. And even if what we are seeing right now seems pretty low, you could still say that CME Options just launched 2 weeks ago. Still, this stops those big investors and makes them rethink their decisions as of the moment on whether they should enter the crypto scene. A reception such as what Bakkt showed should have scared them quite a tad bit imo.

Hopefully the professionals in this space have an attention span above that of a gnat, unlike the non pros.

This type of thing may take years to gain traction. If they haven't planned for that then they're morons. Like Circle are.

When it does they will have money pouring out of their botty.

I guess being both on the side of government and offering something so risky didn't really appeal to rich people. They were really aiming at the wrong crowd for something like this, bitcoin is the currency of anarcho-revolutionists and when you give that coin to old white rich dudes they wouldn't really know what to do with it, plus they are not looking eagerly for something that will make them a ton of money by risking almost all of their money, hence why they didn't showed interest.

Why did other cme futures and all that made some news on crypto world? Because, you could be either anonymous or almost anon when you used it, as long as nobody asked for it you could stay hidden and still risk it plus you could get in with very small amount and make it higher, that is what crypto people want.

It's kind of sad to see this since I myself have been a bakkt supporters when it was released and is receiving hype from everyone. However, they might have plans in the future under their sleeves. Let's wait for things to pan out for the meantime. With a CEO as calm as they have right now, it's pretty much obvious that they have been cooking something under our noses.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding here.

Bakkt is a platform launched by ICE (InterContinental Exchange) to counter the monopoly of CME in the listed bitcoin futures.
CME is a global future trading powerhouse, and already crushed a competitor (the CBoE) on the field.
Bakkt has a slow start, yes, but I think it was related to a couple of very specific reason, they were well aware of:

• Firstly, there are (mainly) dealing with physically settled futures. This imply a very peculiar workflow. This is the same problem with all other physically settled futures: while trading a future on coffe is a thing, taking delivery of a future of coffe is a totally different work. A lot of institution were simply forbidden to trade anything that could one day, be it for error, for some system failure or any other reason, transform in something they couldn’t handle.
• secondly, but partially related to the first one, is the fact that there were a very strong regulatory obstacle for many users of Bakkt to get in touch with physical bitcoin. Be it from Central Banks, targeting banks and other regulated subjects, or even internally created. I don’t thin, for example many asset managers had an investment mandate allowing PM to buy bitcoin on behalf of their clients. Bear in mind that “fast money” didn’t had to wait for Bakkt, and already moved to physical bitcoin years before.

Having said so, I guess the market had too much expectation on Bakkt, dreaming of a Big Bang of volume who never materialised. Those who built positions according to this view were heavily punished in the days following the Bakkt launch debacle.

Now things have changed.

Today Bakkt and CME are at their maximum open interest ever.
I am reluctant to call those future instruments failures.
I discussed this concept  here  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180571.msg53740055#msg53740055), where there is a graph showing Bakkt record open interest registered today.

Options are still lagging behind. I am fairly disappointed and surprised by the low volumes, but also CME just launched and those are very technical markets. I think the liquidity is not there yet to be useful markets for institutional players.

So, negative OP: Bakkt is not done.

I think its early to conclude that Bakkt is done. If you looked at the trading volumes here:

https://twitter.com/BakktBot/

You can see that there are continues flows of volumes, it might be low because of the so much hype around it, but I guess it doesn't gain the needed traction as of this time. Remember that around Oct-Nov, it was reported that their volumes suddenly exploded, but it might be too soon.

Maybe investors are not really into this so called "options" or as I have said, it needed more time to slowly sink in.

I'm afraid this is actually the real trading situation on the whole BTC market since most of the BTC volume is fake or bots. But, perhaps traders just didn't want to trade futures, options, etc. Come on man, margin trading on a highly volatile asset is "crazy." You need steel balls to do that. lol

Being CME and BAKKT institutional investors oriented markets, I think it is highly improbable they are pumping their volumes. Such practices would be illegal in many traditional financial markets, so I think it’s not worth risking their billions a day trading reputation for something (bitcoin related products) that is now totally marginal in their balance sheets.
But I get what you mean: probably times aren’t mature enough yet for these products.

People in crypto are retarded.

Institutions are perfectly happy trading Bitcoin during a boring day because that is still good for 1-2% movements, while tranditional markets generally move about a tenth of that during a boring trading day. In these traditional markets it's normal to use leverage to boost your upside, while in crypto it's somewhat unnecessary, but people are accustomed to this risk now. ::)

I still trade spot from time to time without leverage and I'm super happy when I make a gain. I don't have to worry about getting liquidated due to killer wicks we see a lot on platforms such as Bitmex. Whenever I am trading on Bitmex the highest leverage I go with is either 2 or 3x (mostly 2x). Why add more unnecessary risk? Profit is profit.

But that's what many newcomers who've never traded in their entire lives do the moment they arrive on the scene. It's bizarre but they seem to think it's the fashionable thing to do. I hope they enjoy their utter ruin.

sad reality, in 2019 Bakkt was used as material for FOMO Bitcoin and after Baakt was launched it looked disappointing, this made me think about Eth 2.0 information, and Halving Bitcoin this year, would it be like Baakt's fate?

We can talk about Bakkt's fate after it's been established for 5-10 years. Until then it's still finding its feet. There'll be dead phases. There'll be explosive phases.

Anyone who expected Bakkt to singlehandedly ignite a dead market is a twat. It's one solitary service for a small number of people. It might facilitate further bullishness when the time comes, it certainly doesn't magic it up out of thin air.

Bakkt has done much better than I expected it would do, but it seems that in the last couple of days the volumes are on the way down again, possibly because of their market makers taking a step back.

Bitcoin's halving is such a non happening as far as speculation goes. Do people seriously believe that the large funds are going to buy in right now because of the halving? They have done that early 2019 and currently sit on a sweet pile of coins.

Markets price important happenings in before the mainstream media starts reporting about it, and I do believe that Ethereum 2.0 isn't any different because it has been on the roadmap for such a long time.

@gentlemand I don’t blame these people because Bakkt was hyped up to be the saviour of the crypto market, and their PR team should have marketed it less then maybe people would have been able to tone down their expectations from Bakkt. However you have raised a valid point too, and we all need to give Bakkt at least few more years before we can say it done for good.

BAKKT is exactly this much done.  19 weeks of existence and volumes of all weeks are on the chart. You can see the trend how done is BAKKT compared to the first weeks.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPyugnaU8AAmGzH?format=jpg&name=900x900

It is a mistake to judge something as if it were black and white, just as you did with Bakkt. There are many factors that will make it continue for a while, but this depends on the continuing growth rates.

Contracts circulating in Bakkt are still preliminary and face a lot of oversight and regulatory laws, but over time and the increase in trading volumes you will notice a lot of improvement. In fact, he was surprised by the current level of trading volumes.

As the price increases, regulations become clearer, adoption increases, you will notice a significant difference.

Totally agree.
In addition to that,for an exchange like BAKKT, i.e. with physical delivery, I think the most important metric to look at is Open Interest:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQWxo5WXUAAkuYv?format=jpg&name=900x900

This metric has been steadily growing since inception.
Trading volume can be "faked". Open interest is, at expiry, the quantity of bitcoin being actually traded in the market: way more important.

BAKT is not over, BAKT will be the beginning of history from Bitcoin, I understand the disappointment of all about it, but the effect will be in the future, don't worry

I'm not sure you were saying that before its disappointing launch. The mainstream narrative in medias depicted Bakkt as highly expected by institutional investors, in order to be able to invest in Bitcoin. Obviously it was false, they were satisfied with cash-settled futures on CME and CBOE exchanges.

well, I think BAKT has been finished a long time ago because I see that there is no more development from BAKT, maybe if the price of bitcoin rises this is due to the influence of bitcoin which will experience halving bitcoin and will make bitcoin prices expensive because it will be increasingly difficult to get bitcoin.

What do you mean finished a long time ago? BAKKT has just been around for a short while. If you can remember it was launched just last quarter of last year. We are still in our first quarter this year. BAKKT has just started. It is still in its infancy stage, it has yet to grow and develop more and more. The adoption is still starting. It has not even crossed the first half year of its life yet.

And there's still an even bigger development plan in the pipeline. Perhaps you weren't able to read the news of its plan to develop a wallet which would integrate all reward points that could be spent anytime anywhere as cash or Bitcoin.^[1] That is one hell of a development plan from BAKKT. You simply cannot discount it as nothing. And they are already making the first few steps toward that goal.

[1] https://fortune.com/2020/02/05/bakkt-rewards-points-bitcoin-cash-wallet/

A lot of people think there is some magic in crypto and the same people were investing in shill ICOs back in 2017-18.
If you're wise enough you do understand that crypto is just another investment field and a payment option with great potential.

This is more about "Bakkt is a company that has to make a profit" type of situation rather than "lets not care about bakkt anymore" situation. When people say "is bakkt over" it is more about the question if the company will continue to provide bitcoin related stuff or will they think the volume is too low and it doesn't worth to continue operations which costs more than it profits.

Otherwise nobody is saying we should not care about bakkt, it could be zero or small and it still doesn't matter because even if they help 1 dollar in bitcoin world that is still good for us, plus when there is a hype going on, they might get more attention and the bigger they get the more companies will do what they are doing so it will be an example. That is why the topic is if it will continue or will they close down themselves.

My take is that no one is actually interested in Bitcoin derivatives

How come? The reason for that is simple. You can store Bitcoin without any hassle and the requirement to pay storage and transportation costs, for example (apart from transaction fees, obviously). And in this regard Bitcoin is strikingly different from gold, oil, gas, and other material assets. With them derivatives make perfect sense as you can buy and sell paper gold, etc. But paper bitcoins simply don't cut it as you can just as easily have real bitcoins totally under your control in your personal wallet

Development you most likely wouldn't make use of anyway, so why care?

Bottom line is that people expected moon during Bakkt's launch, but were presented the exact opposite. It's easy to trash talk a company but not do anything to make Bitcoin or the user-experience better yourself.

If we're talking about institutional products that are a flop, then it's definitely Vaneck and SolidX's Bitcoin trust; https://www.vaneck.com/institutional/bitcoin-144a/overview

The same ~64BTC has been sitting in the fund for months without a single penny in new capital, and that while the market has been super bullish for quite a while now. Too many restrictions and pretty high fees make it just not a viable instrument to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

No big dicks care about that. They don't care about anything other than dollars. Us little people think that way. The last thing on their mind is financial sovereignty. We'll see stuff like this take off when everything else does. I don't expect professional money to take the lead. They'll leach off the real people.

If Bakkt do throw in the towel within 3-4 years I'd be rather surprised. They have Circle as a timely warning. They've thrown in the towel just before whatever they abandoned exploded.

And that's precisely the point

Us little folks are no fools either, I mean not anymore since we got Bitcoin. So instead of putting our hard earned money into shady schemes like trust funds and their likes, and then letting their managers feed off us, we can do ourselves whatever they have been doing all that time, but this time to our own advantage. Thus they are left with hungry mouths and empty pockets, which is a good thing if you ask me. Wild-west and cut-throat financial capitalism should be made great again, and available to everyone, now on equal terms

I disagree with that, everyone needing to sell an important amount of BTC could have interest in BTC futures.
For example if you need to buy a car or a flat in June you will be happy to be able to secure now a virtual sell of your bitcoins at 10800$ on a future exchange. You won't want to have to look at the price everyday till june while praying the Savior for the price to not drop.

So were you expecting institutional Investors to just rush into Bakkt without knowing anything about it? Even if they were going to start investing into bitcoin through Bakkt, they wouldn’t just rush into it, everything is step by step. They would have to study and learn more about it and also know whether it’s good for them or not before they start investing. Companies don’t work as you think, they don’t rush things, they have to table it and discuss over it before any actions are taken.

So relax, as time goes on a lot of them might start considering it. I mean to say, this would be too early to conclude about bakkt which was once considered as a Savior when bitcoin was struggling below $4000 last year (but fortunately bitcoin managed to bounce back to $13k before the launch of Bakkt). Still, I agree bakkt needs to work on something which may lead to get it promoted wildly among higher end investors so that they may start using it regularly so that bitcoin markets may experiencing continuous positive impact of existence of Bakkt!

Only a select few think that way. It's great for them that they have that option but the vast majority don't think that way and never, ever will. They'll leave it to the big dicks and the dicks will be only too happy to package it up nicely and feed it back to them.

FTFY.
I do care about financial sovereignity, but you are right, big money, Wall Street care about dollars.
And as many Wall street institution cannot trade Bitcoin directly, for lack of regulation, in the first place, but also for a variety of reasons (reputational risks, internal rules, inadequate  investment mandate, etc),  but only want to be exposed to price appreciation, trading bitcoin derivatives is the only choice left for them.
This is why growing Open Interest (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5188060.msg53836065#msg53836065) is so important for future  (pun not intended) bitcoin growth: more money coming into bitcoin, means more physical bitcoin buyers, directly, if such future is Bakkt related, or indirectly, if different exchanges are involved).
Just remind it’s not that Bitcoin needs Wall Street, but Wall Street that needs Bitcoin.
Traditional investment greatly benefit from an highly uncorrelated positive alpha generating asset (here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183686.msg52423641#msg52423641) a glimpse of why this is happening), so they will try to use every way to smuggle a little bit of bitcoin in traditional investments.

Makes no sense if you ask me

You can just sell your bitcoins for dollars (or whatever) and get done with that. Or not sell anything at all and just keep your bitcoins intact until you actually need them, and hopefully with their price risen by that time. The example you provide makes sense for producers who buy raw materials in advance and want to secure current prices for future production because it affects their profits. With direct consumption like buying a car or whatever futures are pretty much useless (not even speaking of trade costs they incur)


So far it hasn't played out that way

This Bakkt scenario is the same reason I am personally skeptical of the upcoming Bitcoin halving. So many people have extra high hopes that Bakkt will be the game changer for Bitcoin. And also skyrock the price but instead the opposite was totally the case.
With the way it is now, I guess those who kinda gained from Bakkt are those who set it up.
We probably always overhype events in the cryptocurrency industry.

They set it up to make a profit. That is sow it is in business. If they would not see a profit they would never bother starting it. They are not a charity organisation that helps poor bitcoin holders.

But thankfully to futures you can just sell your BTCs in June at the current price (even a little bit higher in fact). Of course you're free to gamble on the price in June on the spot market, and just wait until then to see... but if Bitcoin worths $7000 in June finally, you will lose almost 40%...  

Bakkt I think is just as good as it should if the price can still be brought down but now that its price is climbing up and unstoppable, its likely that those who keep betting the price to drop will lose more. Though there is no real BTC in there, Bakkt is not done.  I'm not from bakkt, but I would probably go there if they allow anyone and go long for the price with more leverage.

I understand that, no one is asking them to run a charity organisation. Its just too bad that almost every innovation in line with Bitcoin will be more profit oriented than goal oriented.
Well, let's hope it will have more significant impact on Bitcoin in the future than it is presently.

Do you think miners are doing it for fun? The moment charity or altruism is required to keep it alive is the moment it embarks on its journey into the grave. The entire thing is an incentive loop. The more naked greed it feeds the healthier and more sustainable it is. It might be distasteful to some but it's totally necessary.

Bakkt was overhyped by people. See even claimed that Bakkt was going to be the reason why the price of Bitcoin would pump because a lot of institutions would start trading on Bitcoin through Bakkt. Quite funny how they all failed, this goes to show that no one can really predict such an invent. Some people just like to overhype things and make it seem like it’s going to be too big and when it comes nothing would happen.

I waited for when Bakkt will be released and when it did I didn’t even see any changes and the market remained as it is. Lol that’s funny.

I don't know if you read this news but it is starting. The hype is not a hype anymore, it is happening. I don't know what happened but I think that is just a delay so the impact will be more fatal.

https://cryptonews.com/news/bitcoin-futures-open-interest-on-bakkt-up-50-in-february-mor-5784.htm

I think Bakkt is the reason why we are seeing these good changes in the price chart.

https://cryptoslate.com/more-bakkt-futures-contracts-are-settled-in-bitcoin-than-in-cash/

While I share the enthusiasm for BAKKT, as stated in my above message (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221705.msg53837499#msg53837499), please remember where we stand.

This is BAKKT OI and Volume chart:
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob88d1ec92cd874938.png

This is the analogous CME OI and Volume chart:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/bloba649a2244ae99a50.png

BAKKT has little more than 5% of the Open Interest registered at CME.
I do agree physical bitcoin is very different from cash settlement, but just realising the growth potential is still huge, might help understanding the bigger picture.

I'm also confident that Bakkt's OI will increase further, but that on its own isn't really much of a big deal for me personally. I think the fact that we have multiple end-to-end regulated platforms with each their own market and OI pools makes Bitcoin's market as a whole more liquid, which is the most important aspect with how illiquid this market was and to a large degree still is.

People assume that the volumes Bakkt are pushing are low because it's so much higher on Bitmex, Bybit, Deribit etc but none of those are regulated and all their volumes are representing leveraged volumes, so who knows how low the actual volume really is compared to the reported daily volumes.

In the same way, volumes reported by Coinbase are much lower than shite Tether exchanges reporting +$500 million in USDT daily volume. Cheaters will always manage to stay far ahead and therefore shouldn't be used as benchmark exchanges.

It is not about charity and altruism

I think the whole dilemma or even thinking in these terms is conceptually wrong. In fact, I could even go as far as to say that your line of reasoning can be reversed and turned upside down or inside out (which way you prefer best). It can be said that when you are looking only for profits or when profits become your primary concern, you are stepping into the graveyard where your idea is to be buried. It is not about charity or altruism, but it is not about profits and money either. It is about doing something that meets the needs of society, so if you get there and do it better than the rest of the pack, money will follow your scent

It's great for Bakkt and ICE but what is the benefit for Bitcoin exactly? Do you think the BTC market will become more smooth and less volatile with a high Open Interest on Bakkt?

I think big open interest mean a well developed future market.
I might be contrarian to a number of members of the forum here, but I think big future market is beneficial to Bitcoin in at least two ways.

• 1. Well developed future markets means that there si a good way to short the market. Shorting a market, or taking a profit when the price falls, greatly helps the price discovery of bitcoin. IF you can go only long a market you cannot bet against it. So you cannot risk your money to bet on a contrarian move. Why regulators suspend the short selling activity when price falls too  much? because it's an effective way to find the true (probably lower) value of the relative financial instruments. In this sense speculators are not avid agents, but they are who risk their capital to discover the true value of an instrument.

• 2. Many agents simply cannot touch bitcoin. Many funds, pension funds, banks etc cannot simply buy bitcoins. this is true for a variety of reasons. Mainly because there is a "moral suasion" from central regulators  on the matter. But also because hey lack proper authorisations, or investment mandate on crypto's. This is why they only can buy futures (physically settled) to gain exposure to prive movements. This is the truth: many actors are only interested in high variance-low correlation movements, not on the anarco-capitalistical side of BTC.

[/list]

Yes it's an interesting point, but I'm not sure it would help the price to grow because if pension funds invest in Bitcoin they wouldn't want to be totally exposed to its high volatility so they will necessarily hedge. And if they hedge (by keeping a certain amount of shorts for example) it will weigh on the price IMO.

Maybe investors are not yet interested in it. The platform still released their services newly in cryptocurrency community, it might take time before they start getting investors that are interested in making use of their services. And right from time I wasn’t expecting the Bakkt to start a bull run, after deep research I realized that there is going to be a Halving and halving is mainly what causes a bull run, if you check the last halving and what happened after, you will get to know what I’m talking about. And also the CEO of Coinbase made mention of this in 2018 when he said that the price of Bitcoin will not go for a bull run, that it might even fall below $3000. We should look forward to the Halving and see what would happen.

It is interesting to watch after people who claim some services as dead now. They see btc's chart and can possibly understand - there were plenty of people who wouldn't believe in btc to climb above $5 price, and there were even more people who would assume btc won't go above $10k in 2018.
There were plenty of same situations in stock market.
So we clearly see - investments (and all around them) are about long term and right conclusions

That's absolutely true, the majority of investors are waiting for the halving, because they know that after that event Bitcoin will rise. Being impatient will badly affect on any investor traders in general, everything will come to you in the right time especially when you take a right opportunity through  a special move or decision, you don't need to trade or invest everyday or every week. try to take always the chance in the appropriate time, that is the most essential thing.

Some of you are fond of expecting too much from this cryptocurrency market but it shouldn’t be like that. I see some people and every little event they will tag it as a catalyst for the next bull run. Just like earlier this year on February 14th, someone was asking a question here whether the Valentine day is going to be leading us to another increase in price.

Why do people keep acting this way lol? That last year I knew that there is not going to be anything big about Bakkt being launched despite that a lot of people kept hyping it too much and coupled up with some predictions that are coming from influencers and experts, they all believed that bull run was going to be last year when Bakkt is launched. But that day can and passed and nothing special about it.

The fact is that after 2017, when the cryptocurrency market showed the highest rates, more than 2 years have passed and each cryptocurrency user hopes to see the same cryptocurrency market trend, when prices rise again by 100 or 1000 times.  That is why every event that occurs on the cryptocurrency market, according to many users, can lead to a bullish trend.  This is what was expected even from the launch of Bakkt.