Digital rewards systems are not necessarily new, but they’re far from being the “norm,” and let’s face it. They can be rather hard to keep track of considering how many separate platforms exist. Institutional cryptocurrency trading platform Bakkt is looking to change all that.
Bakkt Is Back and Looking to Revolutionize Digital Rewards
Bakkt first came to “prominence” in late 2019. Following a whole year of advertising, the trading platform experienced several delays in its release and was ultimately unveiled to lackluster activity and reviews, thereby causing a huge drop in the bitcoin price. At the time, one unit of BTC was trading for just over $9,000, which by today’s terms feels rather small, though the dismal opening performance of Bakkt brought the currency down to just over $8,100, constituting a loss of about $1,300 in a few hours.
While things eventually picked up, Bakkt was supposed to revolutionize crypto by not only performing as an institutional trading venue, but also by allowing users to purchase items through participating retailers with their digital assets. The company has remained active, though it hasn’t quite garnered the attention we all thought it would have.
Still, this isn’t stopping Bakkt from moving forward. The enterprise has come up with a revolutionary plan to combine all of one’s reward points into a single digital wallet. Most people garner online rewards from the shopping they do. Whether it’s through Starbucks, grocery outlets or any other store, these rewards can add up, and it can be rather difficult to keep track of them all considering they’re all being issued through different companies.
Bakkt wants to make it so that all these assets are accessible from a single point. This will allow customers to keep better track of what’s theirs and use them before they expire. The company’s new CEO Gavin Michael explained in a recent interview:
Banks, retailers and travel companies have their own sites for redeeming awards. This is the first time they’ve been aggregated on a broad platform. We estimate that outstanding rewards total over $1 trillion, yet most people have no idea what their own rewards add up to. The day they get the Bakkt app, they’ll find out and put what amounts to hordes of hidden dollars to work.
Jeff Sprecher – an executive with the Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of Bakkt – said that his firm initially began offering bitcoin as a means of attracting professional traders, but that over the past two years, it is largely young people who have been mostly intrigued by the idea of spending bitcoin on goods and services.
Young People Continue to Drive the Digital Future
He states:
Because we’re in the exchange business, we knew investment funds thought they’d find a new customer base by offering bitcoin… It became apparent that the real interest came from a younger generation much more engaged with apps on their mobile devices.
