Bakkt is going live with testing in July

Jun

Bakkt is going live with testing in July

#Bakkt, #Bitcoin, #Blockchain, #Crypto, #Cryptocurrency

News

Crypto has changed forever, and the future is going to be very interesting.

After months of delays, Bakkt will finally go live – with user acceptance testing, but still live – on 22 July.

This is a big step, and the company has made a lot of it in their recent blog post. With more than a nod to the moonboy crypto community, they note that it’s two days after the 50th anniversary of the first landing on the moon, and call their platform a ‘moonshot’. While it’s ‘no small step’, in their words, they also make it clear that Bakkt is a grounded and down-to-earth solution.

They’re right about that. Bakkt is a big deal. It’s going to be the best way for institutional money to come into bitcoin. Institutional investors have already started to buy bitcoin, recognising the huge opportunity that lies in crypto. We have seen recent analysis that shows ‘Firm-sized accounts’ of 1-10k BTC picked up 450,000 BTC since the December 2018 bottom, clearly accumulating in anticipation of an ongoing bull market. But these are not the ‘institutions’ Bakkt is targeting.

The difference of Bakkt is that it offers an end-to-end regulated solution, including custody – actual storage of bitcoins. It’s fully compliant in every respect. That means any institution can use it without fear of the legal grey areas that plague other solutions. Think about it: if you’re a company looking into buying crypto, where do you go? There are a handful of semi-compliant solutions, but they’re not particularly accessible, the fees can be high and liquidity low, and they may not be workable for US-based firms. Bakkt will change that forever.

There’s an interesting dynamic about Bakkt that hasn’t been talked about much. It will pull supply off the market, but it won’t put much (if any) back on, not for some time anyway. Bakkt will access bitcoins from miners and the wider market – making sure they know exactly where they come from – but existing bitcoin holders won’t be able to sell their coins on Bakkt. Add that to the fact that the institutions using Bakkt will be first-timers who want a chance to get into bitcoin and can’t sell their BTC until they actually buy them on Bakkt in the first place, and you can see that there’s going to be a lot of net demand for bitcoins.

All of which means that 22 July may very well be the day bitcoin’s rocket launches, even if not when it actually lands on the moon.