ICE’s Bakkt Plans to Launch Its Bitcoin Futures in Singapore, Ongoing Discussion With MAS

14. Nov 2019 Posted by Akolkar B on News

ICE’s Fintech subsidiary Bakkt is all set to expand its operations in one of Asia’s biggest economic hubs - Singapore. Having launched it Bitcoin Futures contracts in the U.S. markets in September 2019, Bakkt plans to bring this offering to Singapore.

However, Bakkt will be slightly tweaking the nature of its BTC futures offering. Currently, Bakkt offers physically-settled contracts in the U.S. meaning all contracts are settled in actual BTC tokens. But in Singapore, it plans to offer cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts. Tthey plan to bring its BTC futures in Singapore before the year-end.

Sources familiar with the matter said that the Bitcoin futures contracts for Singapore will be traded on  ICE Futures Singapore and cleared through the company’s own clearing house ICE Clear Singapore.

The good thing is that even global traders signed up with the Bakkt platform will get access to these contracts. Adam White said that the company’s decision to expand in Singapore markets comes amid growing client demand. However, he added that Bakkt is currently having discussion with Singapore’s central bank - the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

It looks like the institutional demand for crypto-derivative products is on the rise. After the launch of its Bitcoin Futures, Bakkt has started getting good response from the market players.

Bakkt has also announced launching Option contracts for its Bitcoin Futures by the next month of December 2019.

In another development, the MAS is currently in talks with Wall Street banking giant JP Morgan to develop a blockchain-based prototype which can allow payment in multiple digital currencies on the same network.

“We hope this development will encourage other central banks to conduct similar trials, and we will make the technical specifications publicly accessible to accelerate these efforts. This will be a big step forward in making cross-border transactions faster, cheaper, and safer,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at MAS.

Currently under the testing phase, the prototype aims to integrate several commercial banking applications on a single network. All the developments are recently conducted under MAS’s Project Ubin, which aims at using the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to enhance the settlement and authorization of payments.