For what seems like forever now, the market has either been trading sideways or trading downwards. This year has been a disappointing one for many cryptocurrency traders, the past two weeks being especially being quite hard-hitting for many investors.

The question on everyone's lips is when will the Bitcoin bull run happen? Will it be before the end of 2018 or will it happen sometime in 2019? So many questions yet the one we are going to answer today is what could cause the next Bitcoin bull run.

Bakkt

There are a few things that could cause to the bulls to enter the market once more, the first being Bakkt and the emergence of new institutional futures markets.

News that the launch of the ICE futures platform has been postponed until 24th January next is disappointing but nevertheless, it is widely anticipated that the roll-out of Bakkt Bitcoin daily futures contracts will be one of the causes to bring in millions of dollars into the crypto market.

As a part of the ICE platform means that the New York Stock exchange will also be able to list the Bakkt contracts, giving the new Bitcoin investment vehicle excellent visibility and liquidity opportunities.

According to Brave New Coin:

“Futures contracts are particularly appealing to banks and other institutions looking to invest in volatile assets, as it enables them to put a check on potential fluctuations. Bitcoin's reputation for erratic price movements, with sharp peaks and deep troughs, makes it a prime candidate for this style of product.”

All of this and more indicates Bakkt to be a sustainable product which is accessible and a safe way to access Bitcoin for sceptical institutional traders.

Equity

Another way to consider the potential of security tokens, tokenised securities and security token offerings, is to assess their precursors, utility token and ICOs.

“The economics of utility tokens, which most ICOs and ERC-20s are built using, work as platform customer incentive/reward models. They are absolutely not purchases of equity in the underlying project they are attached to. If they were, this would make them unregistered securities - exposing them to regulatory risk and the securities laws of multiple jurisdictions.”

With this in mind, utility tokens have generally been treated as an equity in their attached projects, with token holders looking like they assume the project profits will eventually feedback to them like dividends.

These are just two things which could cause the next bull run for the crypto market. What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below!