Bakkt moonshot bet – The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) recently announced that their 4th quarter earnings beat Wall Street predictions. Bakkt was spoken of during the earnings call.
Seeking Alpha ran a full transcript of the conference call – in this call, Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Officer of ICE, referred to Bakkt as a “moonshot bet”.
2018 was the year of strategic investment – and for the Bakkt Crypto Futures Project, over $180 million dollars was raised for the project. The money came from ICE and 12 other investors including Fortress Investment Group and Susquehanna International Group. He said that “as we look to 2019 and beyond we’re excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, not only for our core business but also for newer initiatives”. Those initiatives include Bakkt.
Bakkt’s delays is largely attributed to the US government shutdown imposed by Trump. The highly anticipated project is seen as a major on-ramp for cryptocurrency as it includes some major players. This project aims to create an ecosystem that will bring enormous companies like Microsoft and Starbucks into the crypto industry.
Sprecher stated:
“That infrastructure has attracted a lot of very, very interesting companies that have come — some that have invested in Bakkt, some are just working with Bakkt to try to tap into that infrastructure for some new use cases that will involve blockchain and digital assets and other things that we can provide these people. Obviously, we’ve announced the Starbucks — our work with Starbucks and Microsoft. We have very, very large retail franchises global connectivity to end users that we hope will be brought into that ecosystem and could create a very, very valuable company out of that initiative if our business plan plays out.”
There was no firm date on the launch of Bakkt – only that it was expected “later this year”. Last month, Bakkt talked about its Bitcoin futures product. The Bakkt BTC (USD) Daily Future will be a 1 BTC contract that will be physically delivered.
We’ve talked a lot about Bakkt. We know that we must sound like old parrots or a broken recorder. But what do you think will happen when Bakkt is in? Let us know on our Facebook page!
