On Monday (July 22), Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced that it had started user acceptance testing (UAT) for its Bitcoin daily and monthly futures contracts.

On 3 August 2018, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), a leading operator of global exchanges, clearing houses, data and listings services, announced that it planned to form a new subsidiary named Bakkt that would be creating “an integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.” 

Mopre specifically, ICE said that “as an initial component of the Bakkt offering,” ICE’s “U.S.-based futures exchange and clearing house plan to launch a 1-day physically delivered Bitcoin contract along with physical warehousing in November 2018, subject to CFTC review and approval.” 

Until the Bakkt Institutional Digital Asset Summit on July 18, what we knew (according to a blog post by Bakkt COO Adam White) was that on July 22, Bakkt planned to start user acceptance testing (UAT) for its Bitcoin futures products. 

We also knew from Bakkt's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) guide that:

  • The first two contracts to be listed by ICE Futures U.S. are “Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Daily Futures” and “Bitcoin (USD) Monthly Futures”.
  • In order to provide “regulated custody in the Bakkt Warehouse, Bakkt has filed with the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for approval to form a limited-purpose trust company that would serve as a qualified custodian of bitcoin under applicable law.”
  • Bakkt expected to launch its platform in H2 2019 following the completion of UAT and “receipt of regulatory approval from NYDFS.”

Then, on July 20, Sam Doctor, a Managing Director and Quantamental Strategist at Independent research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, released on Friday (July 19) a report on Bakkt Institutional Digital Asset Summit (July 18); one of the many interesting takeaways was that the full launch of the Bakkt platform is expected is to take place later this quarter. 

In a tweet posted that day, Doctor presented one slide from his presentation that showed the key takeaways of Fundstrat’s “Bakkt Institutional Digital Asset Summit takeaways” report, the most interesting of which was that the full launch of the Bakkt platform is expected “late in the current quarter.”

At 19:30 UTC on July 22, Bakkt’s official Twitter account sent out the following tweet to announce that the UAT process had started:

 

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