Bakkt yesterday reached a critical stage of their forthcoming futures platform as it initiated “user acceptance testing”, despite still awaiting regulatory approval. Adam White, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, took to Medium to announce the testing phase, channeling the sentiment surrounding the 50th anniversary of the moon landings to extol the virtues of the platform and remind readers, and potential investors, that Bakkt very much has its feet on the ground.
Bakkt’s Potential to Help Further Legitimize Bitcoin
Bakkt announced during consensus back in May that the end of July would see the testing phase kicked up a notch, with the custody of users’ Bitcoin being a key aspect of this. White didn’t give too much away about exactly which aspects of the platform would be tested, but he did use the opportunity to remind readers of some of the key virtues of the platform when it goes live, including:
- End-to-end regulated environment, including “qualified custody of Bitcoin”
- Physically delivered contracts
- The use of a house clearing to act as escrow between buyers and sellers
- High-performance, reliable platform
Bakkt will have seen the likes of ErisX and LedgerX receive CFTC clearance for their Bitcoin-settled futures exchanges and will be hoping that their high-level backing from New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange will ensure that they too will be in line for certification before too long. After months of delays, it’s highly unlikely that they would be pressing ahead with testing now if there was a chance they wouldn’t achieve this clearance.
Summer Launch Possible
The question of when Bakkt will launch is one that has dogged the platform ever since it was announced last year, but Fundstrat analyst Sam Doctor thinks it will go live this quarter, pending successful tests, giving it a pre-October deadline.
We think #Bakkt could be a huge catalyst for institutional participation in the #crypto market. Here are our takeaways from the Bakkt institutional summit yesterday at the NYSE… #bitcoin #BTC #ETH @fundstrat @fundstrat_ken pic.twitter.com/lkRylD1P4C
— Sam Doctor (@fundstratQuant) July 19, 2019
Doctor attended Bakkt’s Institutional Digital Asset Summit on July 18 and came away with the following conclusions:
- There is “a great deal of institutional anticipation” around the launch
- There appears to be “a critical mass of adopters ready to come on board on Day 1 of Bakkt”
- The launch of Bakkt could be “a huge accelerator for market growth”
If Bakkt does indeed have the impact that Doctor suggests, it won’t be long until all-time highs are surpassed and holders can look to even bigger targets.
