In its first day of trading in the open market, the price of Bakkt (BKKT) fell by more than 6 percent.
When Bakkt (BKKT), an institutional and retail-facing digital asset platform established by the Intercontinental Exchange, closed its tumultuous first day of trading as a publicly traded business, the stock experienced a -6.4 percent drop in value.
BKKT began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $9.45 on Monday morning and increased by about 3.3 percent over the first 30 minutes of trading, reaching $9.77 at the end of the first 30 minutes. Market participants, on the other hand, acted fast to lock in profits, leading prices to plummet by -9.5 percent, to $8.84.
According to Bloomberg, BKKT was trading at $8.76 by the end of the day, having lost about -7 percent from the start of the day.
Bakkt went public on Friday after a merger agreement with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) was completed.
Initial plans for Bakkt were to operate as a cryptocurrency custodian in 2018. Since then, the company has shifted its focus to the development of Bitcoin futures contracts for institutional investors as well as a cryptocurrency asset payments app for consumers.
Bakkt is not Intercontinental Exchange’s first venture into the cryptocurrency space; in January 2015, the company joined as a lead investor in Coinbase’s Series C $75-million financing round.
Negative performance was also seen by Coinbase on its first day of public trading, which saw the cryptocurrency exchange lose -13.8 percent of its value from a starting point price of $381 throughout the course of the day. During the first quarter of 2021, the Intercontinental Exchange sold its interest in Coinbase for a total of $1.2 billion.
Bakkt announced a collaboration with Google earlier this month, which would allow users of its retail app to make payments from their digital asset holdings using Google Pay.
