It’s a done deal! That was the message from yesterday’s tweet by the highly anticipated Bitcoin futures platform Bakkt. In the tweet, Bakkt referenced its acquisition of “certain assets” from futures commission merchant Rosenthal Collins Group (RCG). The statement read in part that “With today’s closing of our transaction with Rosenthal Collins Group, we welcome great new team members to Bakkt.”
The company first announced the deal back in January 14th when it said through its blog post that:
“Our mission requires significant investment in technology to establish an innovative platform, as well as financial market expertise to deliver the most trusted FinTech ecosystem for digital assets.”
Based on this justification, the company’s CEO Kelly Loeffler hinted to the fact that the company was engaging in an ambitious expansion plan. It was not “sitting around” waiting for the CFTC’s approval to launch the platform. In the meantime, it would invest in setting up shop, including raising the necessary funds and making the appropriate hires.
The RCG assets were acquired with the aim to bolster the new platform’s security and scalability. At the time, the company announced that it was acquiring certain assets owned by RCG. They were never revealed but according to the announcement, it wouldn’t be surprising to expect that RCG employees were part of the deal.
To understand why Bakkt acquired the futures commission merchant, Kelly wrote the following explanation:
“How does this advance our work? First, it will enhance our risk management and treasury operations with systems and expertise. Other aspects of the transaction will contribute to our regulatory, AML/KYC and customer service operations as we help enable digital asset acceptance by bringing more choice and control to buyers and sellers.”
Most of the infrastructure is in place now and the ICE backed platform is just waiting for the regulatory approval from the US CFTC to go ahead with the launch. Previously, the platform was scheduled to launch in December but this date was pushed to January 24th, but this date too was not meant to be as the new year started with the partial government shutdown that affected official public service activities for close to 35 days. Bakkt then again postponed their launch but this time did not provide any launch date.
