Bakkt to go public on NYSE on Monday
Bakkt, the digital asset marketplace, has announced that it would be going public on Monday, October 18 on the New York Stock Exchange after completing its merger with the SPAC called VPC Impact Holdings.
The SPAC route seems to be the preferred option for many companies nowadays, especially crypto firms, that want to go public in a quick time. The trading will happen on the ticker BKKT. The company had started as a custodian that held on to digital assets of users, most of whom were large investors, but it has transformed itself over the last few years to offer crypto trading in both spot and derivatives as well. Also, recently, it has been looking to enter into the loyalty programs space using crypto tokens whose time may have finally come. This was one of the first applications of tokens but hasn’t taken off as yet due to issues with regulators and lack of mainstream patronage. But that seems to be getting cleared slowly as more people adopt crypto and the time for usage of tokens for loyalty programs seems to have finally arrived.
Bakkt had planned to go public last January and its plans have come to fruition only now. In the meantime, the company has gone ahead with tie-ups with Google and Starbucks. It had announced a tie-up with Google that it said would take crypto to millions of mainstream users though details of the tie-up are not currently available. It could mean that the companies would partner with each other and share the information which will help to target traders and investors and look at ways and means of taking crypto to the general public and getting Google onboard such a partnership would be a huge boost to the crypto community as a whole.
This is more good news for the crypto industry which has been seeing many crypto firms on the verge of going public which is one of the ways that is being adopted to push crypto to mainstream and making traders and investors aware of the same so that they become comfortable in investing in crypto. The industry also received the good news of Bitcoin ETFs getting approved by the SEC and they are also expected to launch today which should further enhance the profile of the crypto industry.
