Bakkt Sheds Loyalty Division as It Doubles Down on Crypto

Bakkt leaves his loyalty rewards and evokes fresh capital as it turns more complete to digital assets infrastructure.

It has been set to sell the division to Project Labrador Holdco, a subsidiary of Roman DBDR Technology Advisors, for $ 11 million in cash.

The deal, which is expected to be closed in the third quarter, will also include adjustments for obligations and a short -term loan with a limited cash loan to support the transition, the company announced Monday. It also acknowledged that it will re -classify the loyalty segment as a terminated operation as soon as the transaction is completed.

“It sharpens our focus and enables us to devote all resources to Core Crypto offers and the Stablecoin Payments Ecosystem,” said President and Co-CEO Andy Main in a statement.

Co-CEO Akshay Naheta added that the company is now “aimed at accelerating innovation, improving operational efficiency and building scale”, with plans to upgrade its trade tech stack and to promote the crypto treasury strategy that it sketched in June.

Loyalty sales are part of a broader repositioning, because Bakkt wants to streamline the operations and focuses on core crypto services, including guardianship, stabile Payments and tokenized assets. In the second quarter, the crypto company generated $ 568 million to $ 569 million in income, while the loyalty unit yielded around $ 10 million.

The relocation “indicates a clear shift of experiments with the retail trade and a doubling of the crypto infrastructure of institutional quality and space where the trust, safety, compliance and scalability are most important” Decrypt.

But Bakkt would “struggle to compete with Coinbase”, of which Shannon noted that “has a strong hold on institutional partnerships, which are 8 out of 11 Bitcoin ETF’s guardian.”

Shannon added that the capital increase is probably a reflection of the financial pressure that comes from “a huge resistance of cash from a large outflow that has been linked to customer funds that were withdrawn”, which contributed to operational losses and balance tax bound to the loyalty division.

Tomas Fanta, director of Crypto-Native Venture firm Heartcore, called the movement ‘unusual’, said Decrypt The decision of Die Bakkt to add Bitcoin To his treasury “does not add much value to his core activities.”

Nevertheless, loyalty sale was “a strategic decision to reduce a low -profit company,” Fanta said. He called the Bitcoin Treasury Move “a mixture of trend and some strategic planning”, but noted that it “does not significantly add to restructuring efforts in the short term.”

Nevertheless, some in the industry see that movement as a wider urge to crypto infrastructure.

“Doubling down on custody, stablecoin rails and tokenized assets is a clear signal that infrastructure is the only game worth playing in this market,” said Kony Kwong, CEO and co-founder at GAIB, a platform-bridge-bridge Power and on-Chain Finance, said Decrypt.

Bakkt will “have to do a separate lead”, whether through technology, niche markets or deeper institutional tires, Kwong said.