
Of, course, it never really went away. It just needed its morning coffee.
The eyes of the crypto world have been on Bakkt since the project was announced over a year ago. There’s good reason: it’s the best conduit to date for institutional money to move into bitcoin. The fully regulated, end-to-end solution is the missing piece for big money — from family offices to major investment funds — who wanted to get into crypto but could only do so within a regulated framework.
Bakkt’s first month was a disappointment. A few weeks ago, Bakkt had some days where it was doing just $200,000 in volume — meaning that only a few dozen BTC were changing hands most days.
But that all changed at the end of October. The Bakkt Volume Bot logs daily volumes, and the spike in the chart is immediately obvious. Before 23 October, it was a rare day that Bakkt managed $1 million in volume. The average was around $500,000. Since then, the lowest has been $2.5 million, with the average around $6 million. Almost overnight, volumes increased by 1,000%.
Of course, even Bakkt’s top day of over $10 million is nothing compared to BitMex’s peak of over $1 billion. But those who were so quick to write off Bakkt have been forced to think again. And — as in practically all matters of trading and investment — it’s not about the one-off days. It’s about the direction of travel. Bakkt is becoming more and more popular, and it’s establishing itself as a route for big money to come into crypto.
So what changed?
One thing is volatility. 23 October — when Bakkt’s volumes really started to show some movement — was the day that BTC crashed down to $7,300: a mini-capitulation that was followed a couple of days later by a spike to $10k. For institutions, used to low interest rates and limited returns, that 30–40% rise must have been attractive. Bitcoin has traded sideways since then, with falling volumes on the regular exchanges — but Bakkt volumes have remained strong and are even pushing their all-time highs.
Another thing is probably simply the passage of time. Any new product takes a while to gain traction, and it was unfair to expect billions of dollars to pour into crypto via Bakkt in the first few days (as many in the crypto community seemed to assume would happen). Institutional money doesn’t move that fast. They need time to register accounts, formulate strategies, start small and ease into their plans. Realistically, we’ve barely seen the beginning of that process. It’s likely that Bakkt’s volumes will rise by at least another 10x in the coming months. Plus there’s the overall effect of more and more players entering the crypto space, causing a snowball effect; everyone is interested, but no one wants to go first.
Now the first trickle has appeared, the rest can come.
Article by Moonhub
