The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owned by the NYSE, has announced it will list a physically-settled bitcoin futures contracts. They will form a new company (named Bakkt) to make bitcoin a mainstream financial asset, according to Fortune Magazine.
Pending regulatory approval the new platform will launch in November 2018. It is being developed in partnership with Microsoft, Starbucks, and BCG among others. Bakkt’s investors include Microsoft’s M12, Fortress, Susquehanna, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital.
Bakkt will integrate with the ICE’s U.S. futures market to list a physically-settled one-day bitcoin futures product. Its investors include Microsoft’s M12, Fortress, Susquehanna, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital.
Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt, said Bakkt “is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant and consumer participation in digital assets by promoting greater efficiency, security and utility.
If the Bakkt blueprint works as planned, new Bitcoin funds would tap the demand for the cryptocurrency, making it a safer and easier choice. Wall Street could then use Bitcoin’s popularity as an alternative to stocks and bonds to generate large-scale trading volumes.
The volatility of the cryptocurrency has attracted individual speculators but scared off institutional money. In the fall of 2017, the price of Bitcoin spiked from $6,400 to nearly $20,000; it has since fallen back to around $7,700.
For the full interview, read Fortune.