Less than 24 hours ago, the owners of the New York Stock Exchange – Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – announced that they would be partnering with Microsoft, BCG, Starbucks and other firms, to launch a market and ecosystem to list physically settled Bitcoin futures contracts and for a new company to push Bitcoin and other digital assets towards becoming mainstream financial asset. This new company will be known as Bakkt.
It is with this background that CNBC’s Brian Kelly has dubbed this announcement the biggest Bitcoin news of the year. He went on to explain the following:
This is huge news. I think the market is completely underappreciated. So let us talk about why this is the biggest news of the year for Bitcoin.
It paves the way for a Bitcoin ETF. Last week I stood here and said you know what, I don’t think the Bitcoin ETF will get approved. And guess what? The Winkelvoss ETF got rejected. Why?
Because there was not a US regulated exchange and there wasn’t US regulated custody.
Kelly went on to explain that with the Bakkt announcement, there is going to be a regulated exchange and a licensed warehouse where commodities are stored. Thus paving the way for an ETF approval. He added that:
That’s going to make it a lot easier for an ETF to come through. It is even better than Bitcoin Futures…[because] they are talking about getting this into you 401k. They are talking about getting it into your Schwab, Fidelity or TDAmeritrade account…you are going to be able to buy a Bitcoin ETF, a Bitcoin Mutual Fund. It expands the universe.
Brian Kelly would go on to conclude the following:
My conclusion is that the crypto-market is completely missing this. Perhaps the market in general is missing this…this is very, very big news.
From Brian Kelly’s commentary on CNBC, this might be a good time to make an entry into the Bitcoin market as well as stock up on your favorite cryptocurrencies. Mr. Kelly also noted that the timing of the announcement came on a Friday morning when trading in Asia had closed for the day. This in turn meant that the news would not be received until today explaining why there was no market reaction to the news.
To note is the possibility of using Bitcoin to pay for you coffee at Starbucks. This is a major step towards crypto adoption.
