ICE Defers Launch of Bakkt BTC Futures to Jan’2019 Amid Cryptocurrency Bearish Saga

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has announced to defer the launch of its much-anticipated bitcoin trading platform, namely, ‘Bakkt’, which was in the news to facilitate the trading of physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts.

Bakkt, the ICE’s “regulated ecosystem” for institutional investors intending to obtain exposure in cryptocurrency-space, that will offer futures against at least three predominant fiat currencies: the U.S. dollar, British pound sterling and euro, according to a document released October 22nd.

As per the latest update, now the news is that the trading and custodian service of crypto-assets through Bakkt will be launched on the 24thof January, 2019. The CEO of Bakkt, Kelly Loeffler, has updated the crypto investors’ communities on the hovering news which was actually supposed to be unveiled in the month of this December.

As flurry of bearish streaks in cryptocurrencies has halted for today, but earlier BTCUSD tumbled to fresh 13-month lows at $4,303.50, while ETHUSD showed slumps upto $126.20 levels as the bearish momentum is intensified in both trends (as shown in the above technical charts), prolonging a continuous selloff that wiped-off almost $71 billion off the collective market cap.

While the total value of all coins in circulation bottomed at $140.7 billion levels.

Amid such a kind of bearish rout, given the volume of interest in Bakkt, investors stalling the plans of launching futures awaiting the dust to settle down.

Currency Strength Index: FxWirePro's hourly BTC spot index is flashing at -47 levels (which is bearish), hourly USD spot index was at -31 (bearish) while articulating at (09:50 GMT).

For more details on the index, please refer below weblink: http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex