At the time of writing, Bakkt has traded just five bitcoins worth of contracts today. Yesterday, at this same time, there was about 83 BTC worth of contracts traded.

Bakkt launched last week and many have not held back their disappointment in the cryptocurrency world. Yet, to be fair, things should be put into perspective. Bakkt has barely been on the market as a live product.

However, today seems to be a bad day for the exchange nonetheless.

Bakkt’s Trading Volume Dries Up

The much-hyped futures exchange is seeing its trading volume decline substantially today.

At the time of writing, a paltry five bitcoins worth of contracts has been traded on the exchange today so far.

Your immediate reaction might be to say that we should wait for the rest of the day to see the total tally. However, it should be noted that Bakkt traded about 83 BTC worth of contracts yesterday at this same time.

This appears to be a drastic drop in trading volume.

Hype Versus Reality

It was commonly said that institutional investors would pour into Bakkt, given the extreme hype surrounding it. After all, it had the backing of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and other big names. It’s also the first regulated futures exchange to use real BTC. However, the response has been mixed.

The first week of trading volume saw around $5.8M — not bad, but also a little underwhelming for supposedly the ‘biggest launch’ in the cryptocurrency industry of the past two years.

Bakkt has also been blamed for the double-digit losses for Bitcoin which happened just a day after it launched. As BeInCrypto reported, JP Morgan Chase even laid the blame on Bakkt for the crash.

Now, Bakkt seems to be struggling to keep up the same momentum it had during the first week. If today does, indeed, prove to be a significant drop in trading volume, then we may see disappointing voices get louder and louder. If that ends up happening, we can finally put to rest the expectations of ‘institutional investors.’

Do you think that Bakkt might end up being a flop or non-event? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.