Launched two years ago, Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) Bakkt has now bagged $300 million in Series B funding round, announced Mike Blandina, Chief Executive Officer at Bakkt on Monday.
This additional capital was raised with participation from its parent company ICE, Microsoft’s M12, PayU, Pantera Capital, Goldfinch Partners, Boston Consulting Group, and CMT Digital.
“I’m excited at our potential to unlock nearly $1 trillion of digital assets when the Bakkt app launches this summer,” said Blandina.
With the completion of Series B financing and the recent acquisition of Bridge2 Solutions, Bakkt has now become a team for 350 employees.
Unique opportunity to leverage the technology
With this announcement, the company also shared that after launching the first end-to-end regulated market for bitcoin and an institutional bitcoin custody offering in 2019, they are now focused on its consumer app.
The Bakkt app enables the user to aggregate all of their digital assets that involve loyalty and rewards points, in-game assets, merchant stored value, and bitcoin, into a single digital wallet.
With just a few taps, this app will allow the users to use these digital assets to convert them to cash, send them to family and friends, or shop at merchants.
The company is currently powering the loyalty redemption programs for 7 of the top 10 financial institutions and more than 4,500 loyalty and incentive programs that includes two of the largest US airlines.
“We have the unique opportunity to leverage the technology, infrastructure and partners across our businesses to bring innovative new products to market and in doing so expand access to the global economy,” said Blendina.
Financial devastation allows a new bull market to be born
This news came at a point when the market is running red with losses and fear as the price of bitcoin trades just above $5,000 after a violent sell-off last week. This announcement will help the community in keeping their calm and faith that no matter the price, the industry will continue to develop and as Goldman Sachs’ chief equity strategist David Kostin wrote,
“The lesson of prior event-driven bear markets is that financial devastation ultimately allows a new bull market to be born.”
