When you see a trait being "instantiated", be mindful that what is actually happening is that an anonymous class is being instantiated for you.

scalaTraitInstanitationViaAnonClass.scala

// Given a simple trait
trait NiceTrait {
  def isNice(s: String): Boolean = s match {
    case "nice" => true
    case _ => false
  }
}

//It is possible to "instantiate" this trait two ways, manually create a class and instantiate that:
class MyClass extends NiceTrait
val niceness = new MyClass

//This is a shorthand mechanism where an anonymous class is implicitly created:
val niceness2 = new NiceTrait{}
// Put another way, the above creates an anonymous class that extends the trait and instantiates the anonymous class.