Bakkt sheds more than 6% on first of public trading

Bakkt ($BKKT), an institutional and retail-facing digital asset platform founded by Intercontinental Exchange, has suffered a drawdown of -6.4% after closing a volatile first day of trading as a publicly listed company.

After launching on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at $9.45 on the morning of Oct. 18, BKKT rose by roughly 3.3% up to $9.77 during its first 30 minutes of trading. However, traders quickly moved to take profits, causing prices to slump by -9.5% down to $8.84 followed by lunchtime.

According to Bloomberg, BKKT was trading at $8.76 by the day’s close after having shed almost -7% from its opening.

Bakkt went public via a merger deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings on Oct. 15.

Bakkt initially launched in 2018 as a cryptocurrency custodian. The firm has since pivoted to launch institutional-facing bitcoin futures contracts and a retail crypto asset payments app.

Related: Crypto finserv firm Bakkt to soon trade publicly on New York Stock Exchange

Bakkt is not Intercontinental Exchange’s first foray into cryptocurrency, with the firm having participated as a lead investor in Coinbase’s Series C $75 million funding round in January 2015

Like Bakkt, Coinbase posted a bearish performance for its first day of public trading, shedding -13.8% from a starting price of $381 over the course of the day. Intercontinental Exchange sold their stake in Coinbase for $1.2 billion during the first quarter of 2021.

Earlier this month, Bakkt announced partnered with Google to enable its retail app users to make payments from their digital asset balances using Google Pay.

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