Venture Capital Firm Led by World’s 23rd Richest Man Invests in Bakkt

By Swati Kishore

Bakkt, the cryptocurrency platform, has secured investment from Hong Kong billionaire and world’s 23rd richest man, Li Ka-Shing, thereby successfully completing its first round of funding on December 31, 2018.

Bakkt is backed by New York Stock Exchange’s parent company, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

As per a post by the company’s official Medium account, the digital asset platform has attracted some of the biggest venture capital investors in the tech market such as M12, Boston Consulting Group, Pay U.

The most notable entity among the slew of investors was Horizons Venture. The Hong-Kong based Horizons Venture is founded by the world’s 23rd richest man, Li Ka-shing. Over the past decade, Ka-shing has amassed a portfolio of assorted technology-based startups.

Ka-shing has previously made investments in digital currency-based firms. His venture capital firm, Horizon Ventures, had in 2013 invested in the Bitcoin payment processing software firm, Bitpay.

Subsequently, in 2016, Ka-shing had also invested in the Blockchain tech provider, Blockstream.

Bakkt is planning to release a cryptocurrency platform which will facilitate institutional-grade futures contracts for Bitcoin, and other altcoins. With many venture capitals firms investing in Bakkt, the plan seems to have been a hit with the investors.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of Bakkt, Kelly Loeffler, many venture firms joined Horizons Ventures in investing in Bakkt. These firms were respectively, Eagle Seven, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital, Pantera Capital, Alan Howard, Protocol Venture.

With such high profile investors under its arms, Bakkt will be able to stand out from the competition by providing physically delivered crypto futures. Bakkt’s competitor exchanges CBOE and CME, both settle their contracts in fiat.

Crypto traders have their eyes set on the launch of Bakkt’s contracts on January 24, 2019. The earlier launch date of November 2018 was later moved to January 2019, as the company experienced regulatory delays.