Crypto Firm Bakkt Warns It Might Not Be Able to Remain in Business

Bakkt, a crypto platform introduced amid great fanfare in 2018 by the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, warned Wednesday that it might not be able to stay in business.

“We might not be able to continue as a going concern,” the company said in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “We do not believe that our cash and restricted cash are sufficient to fund our operations for the 12 months following the date of” the filing.

The company was set up by Intercontinental Exchange, which owns large derivatives exchanges plus the NYSE, with the initial goal of helping Starbucks customers buy coffee with bitcoin (BTC). Future U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler was its first CEO. It finally introduced a digital wallet in 2021, but that was discontinued last year as Bakkt shifted to business-to-business technology services.

Overall efforts to use bitcoin the asset and the Bitcoin blockchain for payments have seen little success, though the Lightning Network, a layer-2 blockchain where Bitcoin transactions can be offloaded for more-efficient processing, aims to turn that into reality.

Bakkt went public in 2021. Its stock trade closed Wednesday at $1.45, down from more than $40 in 2021.