Could Bitcoin be about to have a happy new year?

After a day or two where the price of Bitcoin has been nudging upwards, there may be some more good news around the corner for the highest profile cryptocurrency.

Bakkt is, as you may know, a platform that’s been seeking approval from American authorities to offer a Bitcoin-settled futures contract. Earlier this year, we’ve seen the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reject or delay decisions on a host of Bitcoin-backed exchange traded funds, that would have been seen as a welcome step towards more mainstream adoption of the currency.

In the case of Bakkt, though, it’s not falling directly under the jurisdiction of the SEC. Rather, that the decision on whether its contract gets approved is to be made by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the US. And according to a new report at the Wall Street Journal, the answer to its request for approval is looking like a yes.

It’ll make it the first futures contract in America to pay out funds in cryptocurrency rather than traditional fiat cash. And Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency of choice, perhaps understandably, for the project.

The contract is the work of Intercontinental Exchange Inc, that just happens to own the New York Stock Exchange. And the target of it will be more traditional institutional investors, who have been sitting cryptocurrency out thus far, put off by the loose regulation of the marketplace and some of the less scrupulous players within it.

The CFTC is set to rule once and for all at the start of 2019, and it all goes to plan, that’ll pave the way for trading to begin shortly thereafter. It’ll be interesting to see just what impact that has on the broader crypto market, too…

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