Licenses, custodial credentials, and B2B partnerships rather than a sticky consumer product.
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✦ The bottom line
Bakkt's would-be moat is the boring part of crypto — qualified custodian status, a New York Trust charter, the new European VASP license from DTR, and B2B partnerships with the likes of Webull and Crypto.com. That regulated plumbing is hard to copy quickly.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Owning the rails, not the storefront
Bakkt isn't trying to be the consumer-facing crypto app. Instead it sells infrastructure — the regulated wires that let other companies (brokerages, payment apps, banks) offer crypto and stablecoin services without building each piece themselves. Each partner uses Bakkt's rails for execution, custody, or compliance.
Wall Street calls this
B2B infrastructure
When the moat is *who's allowed to operate*, the slow-built licensing stack is the real asset.
The customer book
B2B
Counts customers like Webull, Crypto.com, and a growing list of payments and brokerage partners — exactly the kind of regulated platforms that don't want to build their own crypto stack.
Source · 10-K · Business — customers & partners · FY2025 · Filed Mar 19, 2026
Most of those licenses and partnerships took years to build. The pivot also leaned on inheritance: Bakkt was incubated by Intercontinental Exchange (the parent of the New York Stock Exchange), which gave it institutional credibility from day one. Here's the path.
How the stack came together
2018
Incubated by ICE (NYSE's parent) as a regulated bitcoin futures and custody venue.
2021
Goes public via SPAC; builds out consumer crypto + loyalty products.
2024-25
Pivots to B2B infrastructure; lands Webull, Crypto.com partnerships.
Now
Buys DTR for stablecoin payments + EU license; targets the agentic payments market.
The strategy, in management's words
Stablecoin infrastructure represents one of the most significant structural transformations in global payments … With the DTR acquisition on April 30, Bakkt now brings together under one roof the technology, talent, and DTR's modern payments stack, and a European Virtual Asset Service Provider license.
↳ When a company tells you stablecoins are the structural shift, and it just bought the rails, you can see exactly where the moat is supposed to come from.
Source · 8-K · Item 2.02 — CEO commentary (strategy and DTR) · Q1 2026 · Filed May 11, 2026
⚠
Watch
Real B2B partnerships and licenses — but the moat only pays off if the new strategy lands.