Bakkt Warehouse announces institutional custody solutions

The Bitcoin futures and digital assets platform Bakkt Warehouse has unveiled its latest offering this week – an institutional custodial platform for digital assets.

Previously, Bakkt Warehouse only served clients trading Bakkt Bitcoin futures contracts.

However, it has now received authorisation from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) to offer Bitcoin custody solutions to all institutional clients.

Its enterprise-grade offering will ensure “clients around the world have the ability to safeguard their assets”.

Companies such as Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, and Tagomi are among the first institutions to choose Bakkt Warehouse as their preferred digital asset custodian.

In the coming weeks, Bakkt will be looking to onboard additional marquee firms to its custody offering.

The company has a close relationship with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – a Fortune 500 company that owns and operates the market infrastructure which many of the world’s largest financial institutions rely on.

It will be using on-premise data centres and utilising a dedicated network connection between operational sites to eliminate reliance on multi-tenant systems and third-party data centres.

Bakkt Warehouse will also use biometrically controlled bank-grade vaults and enterprise-grade hardware security modules (HSMs) to ensure both safekeeping and availability of customer funds.

It also has geographically distributed primary and secondary facilities to provide systems capable of supporting all production workloads and disaster recovery.

Operational facilities will be protected with 24/7 video monitoring, armed guards, and security operations in tandem with incident response teams.

All signing operations are geographically distributed and require multiple locations to fully sign a transaction.

The company will also employ independently audited business continuity and disaster programs to guarantee the safekeeping of customer funds in the event of a natural disaster or emergency.

The Bakkt trust company is a limited-purpose trust company that is regulated by the NYDFS and boasts a majority independent board which includes auditing and examining committees.

It also possesses a $125 million insurance policy underwritten by a leading global syndicate of insurers.

Interested in reading more Bakkt-related stories? Discover more about the firm expanding its product offering last month.