Digital assets and bitcoin futures startup Bakkt says it is ready to build on a bellwether 2018 after picking up $182.5m of new funding.
Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, Horizons Ventures, Pantera Capital and Protocol Ventures were all among backers of the round, according to a blog post from CEO Kelly Loeffler.
Bakkt specialises in driving institutional access for digital assets, along with merchant and consumer uses, and this year plans to provide new infrastructure, including the industry’s first institutional grade regulated exchange, clearing and warehousing services for physical delivery and storage.
Loeffler said, “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.
“Each step, whether part of discovery or adversity, ultimately strengthens the product. Twenty years ago, it was controversial to suggest that commodities or bonds could trade electronically on a screen, and many steps were required for that evolution to play out.
“Notably, 2018 was the most active year for crypto in its brief ten-year history. This was evidenced by rising investment in distributed ledger technology and digital assets, as well as by blockchain network metrics such as daily bitcoin transaction value and active addresses.
“Yet, these milestones tend to be overshadowed by the more narrow focus on bitcoin’s price, which has been seen by some, as a proxy for the potential of the technology.”
Copyright © 2019 FinTech Global
