The owner of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange recently announced it’s intention to to create a global platform for the purchase, sale and spending of digital assets. The firm will achieve this goal alongside a new company, Bakkt, which it will form to oversee the creation of the platform. In order to facilitate easy and hassle-free selling and purchasing of digital assets, Bakkt will go into partnership with global powerhouses including Starbucks and BCG.

Microsoft’s cloud solution will serve as the power-house of the new platform, which will help its users to buy, sell and spend digital assets. The platform will also include merchant applications, warehousing and federally regulated markets in its project goals but first of all, it will take care of the consumer-facing applications. Bitcoin stands today as the most liquid digital currency, so the firm intends to use the conversion of fiats to Bitcoin as it’s first use case.

ICE’s interest in crypto was awoken as a result of the ever-increasing number of investors in the blockchain technology. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Bakkt will leverage its trusted and advanced market infrastructure to help digital assets to evolve and meet changing investor needs, all the while maintaining security and efficiency and supporting transaction flows.

The CEO and founder of Intercontinental Exchange, Jeffrey C. Sprecher, assured it’s investors that they will be transparent in their dealings with the new asset class.

In his speech he said:

In bringing regulated, connected infrastructure together with institutional and consumer applications for digital assets, we aim to build confidence in the asset class on a global scale, consistent with our track record of bringing transparency and to trust to previously unregulated markets.

Starbucks has a huge role to play in the crypto industry since it has chosen to use crypto for payments of services rendered, it’s partnership with ICE will help boost the firm achieve it’s goal in the crypto industry.