The long-awaited Bakkt platform launched by the Intercontinental Exchange concluded 2018 with the completion of its first round of financing. The total amount raised by 12 partners and investors’ amounts to $182.5 million.
Boston Consulting Group, CMT Digital, Eagle Seven, Goldfinch Partners, Alan Howard, Horizons Ventures, ICE itself, Microsoft’s venture wing, M12, Pantera Capital, PayU and Galaxy Digital are included in the list of investors contributing capital to the venture. Bakkt was also keen to recognize that all those involved “believe in the future of digital assets.”
The news that the Bakkt project has completed its first round of financing broke through the medium account of the company’s CEO. After proudly declaring the amount raised and the financing list, Kelly Loeffler detailed the company’s progress in 2018 and what is to come in 2019.
Kelly Loeffler said
“Our work today is centred on driving institutional access for digital assets, along with merchant and consumer uses, and we’re already expanding on this vision, collaborating with great companies like Starbucks in these efforts.”
The post details Bakkt’s plans to establish an institutional “one stop shop” for cryptocurrency. This will include the first fully regulated exchange, clearing and storage service in the world for the physical delivery of future products.
For all this, Bakkt is awaiting regulatory approval. As stated in the medium post, however, every effort was made to comply with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This involved close cooperation between the two organizations. Meanwhile, new customers continue to join the waiting list to use the Bakkt service, which is welcomed by the writer of the blog.
As if to alleviate those doubts about the future of the digital asset space in the wake of the bear market in 2018, Loeffler reminds the reader that the Intercontinental Exchange (Bakkt ‘s parent company) has previously built exchanges based on state-of-the-art technology and for emerging markets:
“We have worked to build new markets and products many times before. Those of us building Bakkt have earned our stripes by helping advance markets in once-nascent asset classes, from energy to credit derivatives and, now, bitcoin. The path to developing new markets is rarely linear: progress tends to modulate between innovation, dismissal, reinvention, and, finally, acceptance.”
The end of Loeffler ‘s Medium Post appears to continue this reassurance theme for those rattled by 80%+ decline in price this year. It states that no new technology has ever been exposed to the level of media coverage of Bitcoin and other digital assets. For the first time, the Internet’s previous major innovation enables such a proliferation of publications. Lastly, Loeffer reminds users:
“Few innovations reach their potential in their first decade.”
