Good news for cryptocurrency supporters from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chairman, Jeffrey Sprecher. This week he expressed his optimism about the survival of digital currencies as an asset class, according to one business news outlet.
Sprecher, who also happens to be CEO of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) was speaking at the Consensus Invest conference. He told the audience about how he reacts to press headlines like “Will digital assets survive?” and said that his unequivocal answer is yes. However,, when it comes to price he suggested that the NYSE was “agnostic” about that, meaning that it has no bias about what might happen as regards that.
Coincidentally, and rather tellingly, Sprecher was joined on stage at the conference by his wife, Kelly Loeffler, who happens to be the CEO of Bakkt, a cryptocurrency platform. Bakkt also happens to be owned by ICE and will launch next year.
Loeffler talked about what Bakkt will be offering, including the Bitcoin futures contract, saying, ““the Bakkt futures contract will help Bitcoin traders establish a trusted price. Bitcoin now trades at different prices on different exchanges, many of which are unregulated.”
Indeed, the NYSE and its parent company have been quite proactive in the digital currency sphere, which is encouraging for others involved in it. ICE has already partnered with Blockstream, a blockchain tech company to provide the big Wall Street investors, including hedge funds, with what it calls “disciplined” BTC pricing. To do this, it said it would pull data from 15 major exchanges.
A few months after this, ICE then said it would offer traders contracts that would result in customers owning Bitcoin. At the time it said, “ICE has had conversations with other financial institutions about setting up a new operation through which banks can buy a contract, known as a swap, that will end with the customer owning Bitcoin the next day — with the backing and security of the exchange.”
And at the same time as this Sprecher has made a supportive statement on cryptocurrency, it has been announced that an Association for Digital Asset Management (ADAM) has been created to produce a “code of conduct” for the digital currency sector. Among ADAM’s founding members are the former NYSE CEO, Duncan Niederauer, Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant bank, BTIG, a global financial services firm, fintech firm Paxos and GSR, a crypto liquidity solutions provider.
Even if the markets are struggling to find their level, it seems apparent that slowly but surely the financial world is coming around to the idea that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.