An institutional cryptocurrency trading platform led by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), expects their Bitcoin futures to be listed on federally regulated futures exchanges in July.

The well-anticipated Bakkt platform will be overseeing the initial first user tests of its Bitcoin futures live on federally regulated futures exchanges.

“We’ll be working with our customers over the next several weeks to prepare for user acceptance testing (UAT) for futures and custody, which we expect to start in July. We’ll provide more details in upcoming posts, but we expect to use UAT to ensure that customers have time to onboard and can test the trading and custody model we’ve built to their satisfaction.”

The Bakkt platform will list futures settled on two different trading intervals both daily and monthly. In terms of the monthly contract, traders will be able to trade over several months and give institutions access to a broader range of financial manoeuvres including shorting the market.

On top of this, the platform will contribute $35 million into the contracts to put “skin in the game”, aligning the interests of Bakkt with those participants.

But instead of settling contracts in cash like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), Bakkt will have the chance to physically deliver on futures contracts. And so with this, the platform will have a more direct impact on the spot-market price of Bitcoin as it interacts with the supply and demand of the cryptocurrency.

Last month, Bakkt announced that it is working with the New York State Department for the Financial Services to operate as a custodian for digital assets in tandem with offering Bitcoin futures. Before the approval, Bakkt will use a separate, qualified custodian.

Price

Elsewhere in the crypto space, things are looking very bullish as Bitcoin recently made the jump past the $7k mark and NOW it has shot past $8k! At the time of writing, Bitcoin has a price of $8,084 following a 14.53 percent increase over the past 24 hours.