After a long wait and endless hype, the Bakkt Bitcoin trading platform went live on September 23, 2019.
However, it launched to much disappointment and abysmal trading activity. But yesterday’s massive drop in Bitcoin price, appears to have sparked a surge of trading volume on the budding platform, suggesting that institutional investors were simply waiting to buy the dip.
Smart Money Was Waiting to Buy Bitcoin At Lower Prices, Trading Volume Reflects
Bakkt is a Bitcoin futures trading platform which offers physically-settled Bitcoin contracts to institutional investors, created by the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE.
From the day the platform was first announced, the crypto community saw it as the first opportunity for institutional investors to gain exposure directly to actual Bitcoin on a trusted platform, which could have a dramatic effect on the supply and demand of the already scarce crypto asset.
Related Reading | Bakkt First Week Volume Comparable to 4 Minutes Of Bitcoin Trading On Other Exchanges
Some went as far as suggesting that Bakkt would be the catalyst to spark a new bull market. But when the launch arrived, trading volumes were practically non-existent compared to current crypto platforms and exchanges, and the bullish sentiment surrounding the launch quickly turned bearish.
The very next day, Bitcoin dropped $2,000 over 48 hours, to under $8,000. Bitcoin traded in that range for an entire month, and just yesterday broke down to $7,400 where the crypto asset is currently trying to find support.
Bakkt #Bitcoin volume increasing x5 during Yesterday's drop 🧐 pic.twitter.com/gpXlMwWmDW
— Crypto Rand (@crypto_rand) October 24, 2019
With yesterday’s drop, Bakkt trading volume surged to the highest one-day total since the platform’s inception. Before the drop, the platform averaged under $1 million in trading volume per day, with a peak of just over $2 million in a single day. Yesterday’s volume, reached nearly $5 million in Bitcoin traded, 5 times the regular trading volume on the budding platform for institutional investors.
The surge in interest suggests that institutional investors may have an interest in Bitcoin after all, but only at prices lower than what the asset was trading at during launch. Institutional investors are often dubbed “smart money,” and for good reason. These high-wealth investors use a variety of strategies, trading indicators and more – the best the world has to offer – and it would be highly unlikely that this subset of investors would simply start buying up Bitcoin without any sort of plan, just because the platform went live.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Crashes to $7,400 as Crypto Markets Falter
With Bitcoin now falling, prices are becoming increasingly attractive to investors of all types, and it is already being reflected with an uptick in Bakkt’s trading volume. Elsewhere in the market, trading volume has reached yearly lows, suggesting that there’s a distinct lack of interest in the asset class. However, the further Bitcoin drops, investors won’t be able to resist buying cheap Bitcoin, before the halving occurs and the asset reaches the astronomical prices of $100,000 or higher that most prediction models are targeting.