With Bitcoin unhanding $1,500 from its price bucket in the last 11 days, the market sentiments are turning negative. In the last few hours, the price is down again by 6%. The price has edged closer to the crucial resistance level of $7.4K. Will it sustain through the backstab by Bakkt or nosedive to $6,500, the next resistance level?
Before we get down to the Bakkt element let us first go through yesterday’s price events at the micro-level.
At around 8:00 UTC yesterday, the bitcoin price started to witness a steep decline. That said, it continued to drop till 17:00 UTC but stayed $155 above from the dreaded $7.4k resistance. Post which the price started exhibiting weak signs of recovery for the next day. But that did not continue for long.
And that seems to have to do something with Bakkt. All was good till 12 am UTC when Bakkt COO Adam White tweeted a Press Release by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). It announced the launch of Bakkt Bitcoin(USD) “CASH” settled futures. This pushed the bitcoin price to $7460. And now the community is hating Bakkt for this because it expected it to always settle its futures contracts in BTC and not cash.
2017 CME Futures pump and dump scheme all over again?
— david choi (@davidchoi5) November 22, 2019
The “new” baby in town
According to the details shared in the press release, the new contract will be regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. And that’s because it will be listed on ICE Futures Singapore and ICE Clear Singapore will process the clearing.
Currently, ICE is working on obtaining the relevant approvals to list the product. And it has floated an open invitation for parties to submit comments about the suggested change. It will consider the suggestions posted by November 29, 2019.
Once everything is in place, it plans to go live with the listing of the contract on December 9th, 2019.
Once again, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Bakkt proponents considered it to be a great instrument to attract institutional investment money. Institutions had always been shy of investing in crypto because of the price volatility and legitimacy issues. After a disappointing start, Bakkt did gear up and November turned out to be the month of new trading volume highs. In the last 24 hours, the platform traded bitcoin contracts worth $12.41 Mn. All had been good until this announcement was made.
Crypto enthusiasts believe this would cap the Bitcoin price rise the same way it happened when CME launched the cash-settled bitcoin futures in 2017. Read the complete CME Pump Dump story here.
What is Bakkt trying to achieve now?
According to Lucas Scmeddes, President & COO of ICE Singapore, this addition will expose more institutional investors to bitcoin markets. But right now the crypto community sees it as bitcoin price manipulation.
https://twitter.com/TacticalSilence/status/1197679832357720064
Now bitcoin maximalists need to wait and watch how the market behaves till 9th Dec.
Previously, we covered Bakkt opening up to more institutional investors with its custody wallet updates.
