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The international regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies is improving and the company is considering expanding retail on the continent, Bakkt Chief Product Officer Dan O’Prey said. Overall, O’Prey saw positive long-term trends.
Speaking to U.S. Cointelegraph News Editor Sam Burgee at Bitcoin 2023, O’Prey said Bakkt has been prioritizing its role as a “B2B2C” company for the past two years. As such, “a significant amount of mainstream institutional interest” has been focused on Bitcoin (BTC), despite the fallout from the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. He said:
“In the past year, we have seen a lot of repercussions and issues with companies, practices, and coins in this space that I think pulled Bitcoin along even though they had nothing to do with Bitcoin.”
Bitcoin has benefited from a lack of regulatory clarity in the United States compared to other cryptocurrencies as its commodity status has been established by regulators. However, the lack of clarity in the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the US as a whole has been “by far the most important hurdle” to Bitcoin adoption, O’Prey says.
“Over the past three or four years, if done right, it has been a bit slower, but now we are in a much stronger position and recent events have really highlighted the need for such methods.”
Bakkt’s retail platform for embedded trading, payouts and rewards operates only in the US, but Bakkt plans to expand its retail operations internationally. According to the head of blockchain, the company is “working with some of our partners to identify jurisdictions in which they may already be trading shares or looking to add cryptocurrencies or are already present.”
The hell is this. pic.twitter.com/MVguNYebUA
— Dan O’Prey ⚡ (@danoprey) May 19, 2023
O’Prey praised the crypto-asset market rules recently adopted in the European Union: “Any form of clarity is generally good.[…] At least people know where they are, they know how they can work, and they know how they can comply, and that allows businesses and institutions to participate in the space,” he said, adding that regions that provide regulatory clarity for cryptocurrencies”will receive a large influx of talent, capital [и] work places”.