With CEO appointment, Bakkt shows commitment to consumer ambitions

Bakkt has spent much of the year building out its institutional product suite, but the appointment of a new chief executive officer suggests that the firm might focus more on the consumer side of things in 2020. 

The Intercontinental Exchange-backed firm named Mike Blandina as its new CEO last week, replacing the soon-to-be U.S. Senator from Georgia Kelly Loeffler. The appointment of Blandina came as a surprise to some market participants, who were expecting Adam White to take the reins of the business. White, who joined Bakkt as its chief operating officer after several years of leading Coinbase's institutional business, was named president. He's arguably the most public-facing Bakkt employee alongside Loeffler at industry conferences. 

Blandina, previously chief product, joined Bakkt in April 2019.

Blandina's experience is an interesting complement to White's. Whereas White built out GDAX, Coinbase's institutional exchange business, Blandina's history is in consumer payments. He spent three years as a vice president of engineering at PayPal, prior to which he held the position of engineering director, payments at Google, per his LinkedIn profile. 

The appointment of Blandina, given his experience, suggests that the firm is just as serious about the retail app it has been developing as it is about its institutional products – if not moreso. 

Scant information has been released about Bakkt's consumer app. In an October blog post, Blandina said that the firm had built a strong team and that its consumer app and merchant portal would launch in the first half of next year. Starbucks is expected to be the first launch partner, according to the blog. Up until this point, all of Bakkts products have been institutional trading products. 

Its one-month physically delivered future, which launched in September, sees an average $8.8 million worth of bitcoin trade hands on a given day, according to data compiled by The Block.

The past few months have seen the firm push forward on the institutional product front. In November, the firm officially rolled out its institutional custody business, which stores bitcoin on behalf of investors like Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital. In December, the firm launched an option contract tied to the future as well as a cash-settled future, which trades exclusively on ICE's Singapore venue. 

The firm said it would continue to expand its suite of products, building on top of its original one-month future contract. 

Still, with Blandina helming the ship, it's likely that we will see more developments out of the consumer app and fewer announcements about newfangled derivatives – but only time will tell.