Bakkt to Roll Out First Bitcoin Futures Testing in July 2019

Bakkt plans to roll out testing for bitcoin futures trading in early July 2019, Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler announced in a Medium post on May 13.

First announced in August 2018, institutional crypto exchange Bakkt now announced that it will soon introduce bitcoin futures trading testing on a federally regulated futures exchange in collaboration with its parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

Specifically, Bakkt is working with both ICE Futures U.S. exchange and ICE Clear U.S. clearinghouse to prepare the first testing of bitcoin futures trading and custody. Loeffler wrote:

“In conjunction with our exchange and clearing partners at ICE, we’ll be working with our customers over the next several weeks to prepare for user acceptance testing (UAT) for futures and custody, which we expect to start in July.”

Along with the announcement, the company also reported that it was working closely with the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission in order to be compliant with federal regulations, as well as to meet major requirements in terms of investors protection.

As such, the ICE Futures U.S. filed with the CFTC through to get a regulatory approval for offering two major types of bitcoin futures contracts such as daily settlement bitcoin futures and monthly bitcoin futures.

In late April, Bakkt acquired crypto custodian service Digital Asset Custody Company (DACC), also announcing that the firm filed with the New York Department of Financial Services to operate as a trust company to serve as a Qualified Custodian for digital assets.

Most recently, Reuters published an article alleging that the ICE took advantage of the “crypto winter” of 2018 purchase crypto assets at a discount for its Bakkt platform.