NYSE


By Bill Taylor, Fintek Capital Well, all the bitcoin "naysayers" have just taken a major body blow, and certainly a big bruise to their egos. Predicting the demise of bitcoin will be a whole lot harder since ICE (Intercontinental Exchange....owner of the NYSE) just ran you over like a semi-truck smashing a bug. ICE is creating a new company dubbed

"Bakkt"

(pronounced backed) that will roll out a platform allowing customers to buy, sell, store and

spend

digital currencies. The exchange also announced it was launching one day,

physical

delivered bitcoin futures (current futures are all cash settled). Also, this is all to happen in November (pending regulatory approval by the CFTC). This is

BIG!

Now here is the really sweet part of this new venture. Bakkt is building the platform with

BCG

,

Microsoft

and.....ready for this.......

Starbucks

. As mentioned, the

BAKKT

platform will allow for the buying, selling, storing

AND

spending digital currencies. So what better retail place to spend bitcoins than Starbucks? Again, the bitcoin "demise group" bases a lot of its bearish talk on the fact that bitcoin's acceptance in a mass scale for transactions will never happen. Guys and gals, that theory just got hit by the same semi-truck. Oh well. Of course the one very big thing that has been holding much of the innovation and growth back has been regulations. The

Bakkt

group will be pivotal in developing a truly trusted and regulated way to convert dollars into digital assets, thus allowing for widespread use in transactions (note: Japan and other countries have already mastered this). By the way, a recent study revealed that 88% of cryptocurrency exchanges

WANT

some form of regulation. (Note again: maybe not a good idea to keep money in the other 12%?) So, the ICE

Bakkt

platform is a real door opener for a trusted regulatory environment not to mention extremely high profile via Starbucks. Bitcoin has just taken a huge step forward. So now what, bitcoin "naysayers?" The spelling of bitcoin will never work?

Bill Taylor is Managing Partner at Fintek Capital & a frequent contributor to FintekNews