Intercontinental Exchange's Bakkt says its institutional custody business has now more than 70 clients as it eyes the launch of a much-anticipated consumer app
Frank Chaparro / The Block :
Context & Ripple Effects
Bakkt's custody business is the payoff of a long regulatory grind: after its initial $182.5M raise was slowed by approval hurdles, it bought the Digital Asset Custody Company (acquiring DACC) and won New York trust approval before launching institutional custody in November 2019.
Six months on, that unit counts more than 70 clients, and the March $300M Series B led with M12 among investors was raised explicitly to fund a consumer asset-management app slated for summer — turning Bakkt from a futures experiment into a two-sided institutional-plus-retail platform under Intercontinental Exchange.
First-order effects
- More than 70 institutions now hold digital assets through a NY-regulated trust, giving ICE's crypto subsidiary its first scaled revenue line beyond bitcoin futures.
- The summer consumer app moves Bakkt directly toward retail users for the first time, backed by fresh Series B capital.
Second-order effects
- A regulated-custody-plus-consumer-app stack forces rival exchanges and wallet providers to compete on trust charters and insurance rather than just trading fees.
- Institutional custodians approved by New York regulators become the reference point banks and funds use when choosing where to park crypto holdings.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, traditional exchange operators like ICE enter crypto by buying trust charters and stacking custody, trading, and consumer products on top — consolidating the market around regulated incumbents rather than native startups.
The trend: Legacy financial-exchange groups are building vertically integrated, regulator-approved cryptocurrency platforms — custody first, consumer apps second.