Almost a year to the day after the CBOE and CME launched their own bitcoin futures products, the Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt platform is heralding the launch of its own futures on December 12, though the platform is still pending approval from the Commodity Futures Trade Commission.
Originally slated for November, Bakkt was announced in August 2018 as “a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant and consumer participation in digital assets.” The platform is advertised as an all-encompassing, “open platform” for “digital assets across global markets and commerce,” and was, in part, pitched as a solution for day-to-day crypto payments for merchants.
It also comes with a promise of daily futures contracts. The Bakkt Daily Bitcoin Futures Contract will allow investors to trade “a physically settled daily futures contract for bitcoin,” according to the announcement. This means that, unlike their CBOE and CME counterparts, which settle in cash, these contracts will settle in actual bitcoin.
The announcement continues to state that “[one] daily contract will be listed for trading each Exchange Business Day.” Each bitcoin will be held by Bakkt LLC in what the exchange calls its “Digital Asset Warehouse,” and each contract will be settled by ICE Clear US, a subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange.
Full details and specifications for the contracts can be found here.
This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.
