Bakkt will be receiving good company in the form of Mike Blandina, a former executive of Google and PayPal. CEO Kelly Loeffler confirmed the news in a blog post recently published on Medium.



According to Loeffler, Blandina will be taking over chief product officer (CPO) duties at the digital asset platform. He will reportedly spearhead the company’s efforts to assemble a reliable ecosystem aimed at digital assets used for payments. The objective is to assist Bakkt in bringing real-world applications to Bitcoin (BTC) and other active cryptocurrencies.



Blandina has over two decades of experience in engineering, digital payments, and operations. He was the head of credit engineering and payments at PayPal. He also spent time at Google as the engineering director for Google Wallet. Blandina was also the CTO of Blackhawk Network, a digital payment, and global gift card company. The engineering maverick also acquired fintech startup TxVia.



There are other notable names headed to Bakkt. Loeffler’s announcement also revealed that Adam White, a Coinbase pioneer, has been appointed as Bakkt’s COO. He’s also the chief executive of its Institutional Custody and Traded Products group. Former Worldpay boss Balaji Devarasetty, Bakkt’s current Tech VP, was also mentioned.



The company also secured the services of Tom Noonan, a cybersecurity expert from Cisco, IBM, and Endgame, back in March.



Bakkt was initially announced in August of last year. At the time, the company was said to have been delayed in securing approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company was also said to have earned a valuation of $740 million after raising more than $180 million in funding.

