Rumours Abound Of Bakkt Going Public By Way Of $2 Billion Merger

Bakkt stands as a crypto trading platform owned by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). However, rumors are floating around that there are deep discussions regarding going public. In particular, they are going public by way of a merger with one VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings.

Anonymous Sources Straight From Bloomberg

Bloomberg published a story about this on the 7th of January, 2020. In it, the news outlet cited anonymous sources, as ever, that claim knowledge about the entire matter. According to Bloomberg’s article, Bakkt is already in the advanced stages of negotiating the merger, with a prediction that this matter will see an official announcement within the week’s time.

The anonymous sources in question have come to start making estimations, speculating that this new combined entity after the merger could be valued at an excess of $2 billion. This is, of course, assuming the merger pulls through without a hassle.

The Two Players In Question

As for VPC, the firm stands as a special-purpose acquisition company. VPC boasts close affiliation with one Victory Park Capital, which itself is an alternative investment firm registered at the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. John Martin stands as the Chief Executive at VPC, and has gone on record to describe the core strategy of the firm as trying to find and create partnerships with businesses within the fintech sector in order to help them grow.

Bakkt, in turn, saw its launch back in 2019, with its offering prioritizing institutional clients. The regulated platform was one of the first out there to offer so-called “physically-delivered” Bitcoin futures contracts, meaning futures contracts that end with the actual assets being exchanged. As it stands now, the past week saw the futures trading of the exchange surpass the $286 million mark.

Bakkt Seeing Some Interesting Time

Bakkt had made some interesting choices, as well, as the firm had initially raised around $300 million in the capital, with the funding round led by ICE. From there, the firm acquired the Bridge2 Solutions loyalty program provider.

In an interesting tidbit of politics, Kelly Loeffler stands as the founding CEO of Bakkt, and is currently an outgoing US senator. Loeffler had lost the run-off election in Georgia on the 6th of January, 2020. As it stands now, Bakkt is being led by way of an Interim CEO, one David Clifton, which is himself the Vice President of ICE’s M&A and Integration division. This occurred after the previous CEO, Mike Blandina, left last April for JPMorgan Chase & Co.