Bakkt Opens Bitcoin Options and Cash-Settled Futures

Intercontinental Exchange’s Bakkt expanded its regulated bitcoin derivatives complex on December 9, 2019, opening monthly options on its physically delivered U.S. bitcoin futures and a separate cash-settled monthly futures contract in Singapore. The launch mattered less as a one-day trading signal than as a market-structure step: professional participants gained more ways to hedge bitcoin exposure inside exchange and clearing frameworks already familiar from conventional derivatives.

Two contracts, two settlement paths

The U.S. options were listed on ICE Futures U.S. and cleared through ICE Clear U.S. Their underlying instrument was Bakkt’s Bitcoin (USD) Monthly Futures contract, which had begun trading on September 23, 2019 and could result in physical delivery of bitcoin. That structure connected the option to Bakkt’s own regulated futures price rather than directly to a collection of cryptocurrency spot exchanges.

ICE Futures U.S. had self-certified the option terms with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before launch. A November 6 supplemental filing described the contract as European style, meaning it was exercisable at expiration rather than early. It also said an option at least one tick in the money at expiration would be exercised automatically by the clearing organization. The filing placed the daily settlement-price window for bitcoin futures and options between 4:58 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. Eastern prevailing time.

The second product addressed a different constraint. ICE Futures Singapore listed a cash-settled Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Monthly Futures contract, cleared by ICE Clear Singapore. ICE’s contract overview specified a size of one bitcoin per contract and said final settlement would reference the corresponding physically delivered Bakkt monthly futures contract traded in the United States. The venue and clearing house were regulated in Singapore by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

That design let participants obtain or hedge bitcoin price exposure without arranging delivery or custody of bitcoin under the Singapore contract. The U.S. option, by contrast, was built on the physically delivered futures ecosystem. The distinction is important: “Bakkt bitcoin derivatives” did not describe a single settlement method, and the cash-settled Singapore future did not itself transfer bitcoin.

What the launch proved—and did not

Options added a type of risk management that linear futures could not replicate. Calls and puts allow exposures tied to direction, volatility and strike prices, while central clearing standardizes counterparty and margin arrangements. For Bakkt and ICE, the strategic question was whether a regulated product family could attract enough participation to produce durable liquidity and credible price discovery. Listing the contracts answered the infrastructure question; it did not establish broad institutional adoption.

No price reaction or event-day trading-volume conclusion is made here. The contemporaneous records reviewed do not provide a complete, directly comparable December 9 window across Bakkt’s U.S. options, Singapore futures and the fragmented global bitcoin spot market. A same-day CoinDesk report confirmed that both products had gone live, but its cumulative figure for Bakkt’s earlier futures was not an event-day measure and is not used here.

Later record

ICE’s 2019 annual report subsequently confirmed December 9 as the options launch date. It reported 68 Bakkt bitcoin option contracts traded during 2019 and open interest of 51 contracts at December 31, 2019. Those later figures cover the launch-to-year-end period, not December 9 alone, so they clarify the product’s initially limited scale without changing what could be said on the launch date.