Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of NYSE, partners with Starbucks, Microsoft and others to form a new Bitcoin trading platform called Bakkt
- Launch of physical futures contract planned for November — Venture wants to offer merchant and consumer applications
Context & Ripple Effects
In August 2018, Intercontinental Exchange put its exchange-building machinery behind crypto: the NYSE owner formed Bakkt with Starbucks, Microsoft and other partners, announcing a physically-settled Bitcoin futures contract targeted for November and merchant/consumer applications aimed at everyday Bitcoin payments. The physical settlement was the differentiator — actual Bitcoin changing hands rather than cash proxies — and the retail names were the distribution story.
The arc since then is instructive: after winning approval from New York's financial regulator, Bakkt set a September 23, 2019 date for its physically-settled bitcoin futures, and ICE finally launched the long-awaited contract that month. By February 2024, the NYSE-listed company filed an SEC disclosure warning it might not stay in business for another year — making this founding announcement the opening chapter of a cautionary tale about exchange-led crypto ventures.
First-order effects
- Bakkt's launch gives Bitcoin its first venue backed by a major incumbent exchange group, with ICE's infrastructure and Starbucks' and Microsoft's involvement lending institutional credibility to a market previously dominated by unregulated crypto-native exchanges.
- Starbucks gains a stated path to accepting Bitcoin at the point of sale via Bakkt's planned merchant applications, converting its partnership into a potential consumer-payments channel.
Second-order effects
- Other incumbent exchanges face pressure to build or partner into regulated crypto products rather than cede the segment to crypto-native venues, as ICE has converted its NYSE franchise into a crypto-market entry point.
- If Bakkt's physical-settlement model works, custodians and merchants become the bottleneck players — whoever holds and moves the actual Bitcoin captures the fee stream that cash-settled rivals route around.
Third-order effects
- The full trajectory — from a marquee 2018 launch through the 2019 futures debut to the 2024 going-concern filing — suggests that exchange pedigree and big-name partnerships do not by themselves sustain crypto trading businesses once speculative volume normalizes.
- If the pattern holds, institutional crypto infrastructure consolidates around fewer, better-capitalized platforms, with regulators like New York's financial services authority acting as the gatekeepers determining which ventures reach market at all.
The trend: Legacy financial incumbents spent the late 2010s building regulated crypto rails through branded joint ventures, and Bakkt's later distress is the data point testing whether that institutionalization thesis survives contact with thin trading demand.