My take is that no one is actually interested in Bitcoin derivatives
No, big dicks care about that. They don't care about anything other than dollars. Us little people think that way. The last thing on their mind is financial sovereignty. We'll see stuff like this take off when everything else does. I don't expect professional money to take the lead. They'll leach off the real people.
If Bakkt do throw in the towel within 3-4 years I'd be rather surprised. They have Circle as a timely warning. They've thrown in the towel just before whatever they abandoned exploded.
FTFY.
I do care about financial sovereignity, but you are right, big money, Wall Street care about dollars.
And as many Wall street institution cannot trade Bitcoin directly, for lack of regulation, in the first place, but also for a variety of reasons (reputational risks, internal rules, inadequate investment mandate, etc), but only want to be exposed to price appreciation, trading bitcoin derivatives is the only choice left for them.
This is why growing Open Interest is so important for future (pun not intended) bitcoin growth: more money coming into bitcoin, means more physical bitcoin buyers, directly, if such future is Bakkt related, or indirectly, if different exchanges are involved).
Just remind it’s not that Bitcoin needs Wall Street, but Wall Street that needs Bitcoin.
Traditional investment greatly benefit from an highly uncorrelated positive alpha generating asset (here a glimpse of why this is happening), so they will try to use every way to smuggle a little bit of bitcoin in traditional investments.
