The cryptocurrency world may have seen better days, given the fact that the crypto world just collapsed, as Bitcoin’s price is again the $4,000 price level and the crypto market cap losing $8 billion. And while ICOs are “regulated” in a variety of ways across the world, some cryptocurrency companies are getting real “muscle” behind their valuations and expertise.
Bakkt is an innovative crypto platform, designed to enable its clients to “seamlessly buy, sell, store and spend digital assets”. The goal of the company is to develop an open technology to connect the existing market and merchant infrastructure to blockchain, as advertised on the company’s website. The platform is secure, seamless and efficient.
At the very end of 2018, Bakkt completed its Series A round getting funding from some very prominent investors. The total funding raised amounts to $180 million, a substantial amount for a cryptocurrency company these days.
The most interesting and noticeable investment comes from the 23rdrichest man on earth – Mr. Li Ka-Shing. He is a Hong-Kong-based billionaire, who is heavily investing in technology and fintech startups. His company, Horizons Ventures, is a venture capital company in Hong Kong.
In addition to Li Ka-Shing, Bakkt has managed to attract investors, some of which include CMT Digital, Alan Howard, Pantera Capital and Goldfinch Partners.
While at first it may seem surprising that Bakkt has already managed to woo such serious investors and Series A funding, the company’s business strategy differentiates in a major way from other exchanges such as CME and CBOE in the sense that Bakkt settles all its contracts by warehousing them first and then clearing them. CBOE and CME, for example, settle their contracts in fiat currencies first.