Bakkt CEO Kelly Loeffler Will be the New U.S. Senator for the State of Georgia
It seems that influential people from the crypto industry are now joining important positions in the U.S. government. Recently, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has appointed Kelly Loeffler - CEO of ICE’s crypto platform Bakkt - as the senator for the state of Georgia.
On Tuesday, December 4, the Washington Post reported that Loeffler will replace Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) who will be retiring by the end of 2019. Speaking at the event Loeffler said: “I haven’t spent my life trying to get to Washington. But here’s what folks are gonna find out about me: I’m a lifelong conservative. Pro-Second Amendment. Pro-military. Pro-wall. And pro-Trump. I make no apologies for my conservative values, and will proudly support President Trump’s conservative judges.”
Loffler refrained from speaking anything at this point about crypto or bitcoin in her introductory remarks. Ever since ICE announced its Bakkt platform last year in 2018, Kelly Loeffler has been on the company board serving as Bakkt’s Chief Executive.
After year of conversation with the regulators, Bakkt finally launched its physically-settled Bitcoin Futures contracts a few months back. In the next week, Baktt will also be launching options for its futures contracts as per the earlier announcement.
On the other hand, Bakkt has also announced to launched a consumer app in the first-half of 2020. During the platform launch last year, Bakkt has made it clear that it plans to bring crypto use as a mainstream payments method.
Thus, Bakkt has patterned with retail giants like Starbucks wherein coffee lovers can pay in crypto using the Bakkt app. Note that this should not be mistaken for Starbucks accepting crypto payments. The Bakkt Consumer App will convert crypto to fiat before making the settlement with Starbucks.
Speaking about the consumer app launch, Bakkt’s chief product officer Mike Blandina said: “A key feature of the model we’ve designed is to support a superset of digital assets, including cryptocurrencies as seamlessly as investors transact in stocks in a retail brokerage account. Our vision is to provide a consumer platform for managing a digital asset portfolio, whether they wish to store, transact, trade or transfer their assets.”
It is unclear at this point that who will fill Loeffler’s shoes at Bakkt once she joins the government office on Jan 1, 2020.