New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher voiced his buoyancy towards the survival of digital currencies as an asset class. Barron’s reports that when he saw headlines asking “Will digital assets survive?,” he would say that “the unequivocal answer is yes.” “We’re kind of agnostic to price,” Sprecher added when speaking at the Consensus Invest conference.
On stage at the Consensus Invest event in New York, Sprecher – also the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — was accompanied by his wife and the CEO of cryptocurrency platform Bakkt, Kelly Loeffler. Baakkt is owned by ICE and expects its launch early of 2019, being delayed from a December 2018 launch date due to the “volume of interest” in the company and the “work required to get all the pieces in place,” the firm said.
Loeffler commented on the Bitcoin (BTC) futures contract offering, stating: “the Bakkt futures contract will help Bitcoin traders establish a trusted price. Bitcoin now trades at different prices on different exchanges, many of which are unregulated.”
The NYSE and its parent firm ICE continue to exhibit a dynamic approach to the crypto space. Back in January, ICE partnered with the blockchain tech company Blockstream to bring “disciplined” BTC price information to major Wall Street investors. ICE further planned to pull data from 15 major exchanges and deliver it to large financial names, including hedge funds and professional trading firms.
In addition, ICE announced plans in May to offer traders contracts that will ultimately result in clients owning BTC. ICE reportedly “has had conversations with other financial institutions about setting up a new operation through which banks can buy a contract, known as a swap, that will end with the customer owning Bitcoin the next day — with the backing and security of the exchange.”
Cointelegraph reported earlier today on the establishment of an Association for Digital Asset Markets (ADAM) to create a “code of conduct” for the cryptocurrency sector. Former CEO of the NYSE Duncan Niederauer, Mike Novogratz’s crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital, global financial services firm BTIG, fintech firm Paxos and crypto liquidity solutions provider GSR are all amongst ADAM’s founding members.
