Bakkt, a crypto derivatives company run by the Intercontinental Exchange, announced that a record-high volume of Bakkt Bitcoin Futures were traded on Tuesday, September 15.

Image: Decrypt

What is Bakkt? Everything You Need to Know (2023)

The owner of the New York Stock Exchange wants to make Bitcoin mainstream. What counts as mainstream? Traditional and financial institutions. If you can get the old money to feel comfortable trading new money, you can bring a huge new wave of investors to the cryptocurrency game—and maybe even stabilize it. That’s the promise of Bakkt, which hopes to become the on-ramp of the institutional investor. We learn more about it below. What is Bakkt? At its core, Bakkt is a custody service that stores...

The 15,955 futures traded accounted for about $172 million in volume. Bakkt's previous record was 11,706 Bitcoin futures (roughly $125 million worth) on July 28. Today's high is a 36% improvement.

Bitcoin futures are agreements to sell or buy BTC at a point in the future for a specific price. Given Bitcoin's recent (some might say "constant") price fluctuations, putting money in futures contracts is a bit of a gamble.

CME v. Bakkt
CME volume (top) compared to Bakkt volume (bottom). Image: Skew

But it's one that Bakkt will be happy people are taking. In January, Bakkt went days at a time without seeing any Bitcoin options trading.

Despite the good news, Bakkt still comes in behind its main competitor, CME, which regularly does volume above Bakkt's record level. Today, it did $262 million in volume, a relatively small haul compared to the $1.1 billion it did on September 2.

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