The much-anticipated Bakkt futures platform for physically delivered bitcoin has been disappointing, at least for now, with just $5.8 million in BTC trading volume in its first week. Many in the community see Bakkt as a catalyst to attract institutional investors to the market, but so far, no institutions seem to be interested.

Bakkt has been one of the most popular projects in the Bitcoin community. Compared with other futures products that have been launched, it has one major difference, that is, its futures delivery is backed by real bitcoin. This means that when investors buy a contract through Bakkt, they are buying the actual BTC for that contract.

However, Bakkt’s post-launch performance has also been incredible, with only $5.8 million in transaction volume on the entire platform in the first 7 days. That compares to CME futures, which traded $460 million in its first week, and today's $700 million in weekly volume.

Some cryptocurrency critics believe that the adoption of Bakkt will be slow at first, but will increase significantly as investors wait to see how the market works, what regulations come out, etc.

Many analysts have linked bitcoin's 20 percent price drop this week to Bakkt's disappointing performance, with low trading volume spooking some investors hoping for institutional money after more than a year of hype. The price of Bitcoin was hovering around $10,000 before launch, but with some slow drops and quick crashes, the price is now hovering around $8,000.

In this case, history appears to be repeating itself, with similar price drops when both the CBOE and CME launched bitcoin futures markets in December 2017. When Bitcoin reached its all-time high of $20,000, within a month and a half, Bitcoin lost almost 50% of its value from its peak.

The original text comes from bitcoinist, compiled by the BluemountainLabs team, the English copyright belongs to the original author, please contact the editor for Chinese reprint.

The original text comes from bitcoinist, compiled by the BluemountainLabs team, the English copyright belongs to the original author, please contact the editor for Chinese reprint.