Institutional Adoption and Upcoming Developments

Institutional Adoption

Crypto enthusiasts have long dreamed about the possibility of “institutional adoption” of cryptocurrencies. In 2018, crypto-investing platforms were released by Square and Robinhood. We predict this trend to continue in 2019, as larger, more traditional financial institutions begin offering digital-asset products. The NYSE’s parent company, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), raised over $180M in 2018 to launch Bakkt, a crypto-asset platform for exchanging and storing crypto. Bakkt is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2019 and will be offering a Bitcoin/USD Daily Futures contract. In addition, Starbucks and Bakkt have entered a deal that will allow users to pay at US Starbucks locations using Bitcoin.

Amid rumors sparked by information leaked to Bloomberg, NYSE rival NASDAQ also confirmed that they will launch Bitcoin futures in the first half of 2019. To quote the NASDAQ VP of Media, “We’ve seen plenty of speculation and rumors…but no one has thought to come to us and ask if we can confirm it, so, here you go — we’re doing this, and it’s happening”

Exchanges are not the only traditional institutions expanding into crypto in 2019, as asset managers are also looking to launch investment platforms for crypto. The most noteworthy is Fidelity Digital Assets, a platform to “secure, trade, and service crypto investments,” with enterprise-grade security. Fidelity is one of the largest traditional asset managers, and their expansion into digital assets is rooted in their belief in a future in which “all types of assets all issued natively on blockchains or represented in a tokenized format.”