Bakkt offers an all-in-one digital wallet with options to trade crypto, buy and send gift cards, and more. The company focuses on a long-term, low-risk strategy. But how is it working to maintain trust among clients both big and small as other crypto firms file for bankruptcy or run into financial issues? Dan O'Prey, Chief Product Officer of Bitcoin and crypto at Bakkt, joins Closing Bell to discuss customer demand, operating in the current market, and more. 

Closing Bell

Bakkt CPO on Product Suite, Demand Amid Broader Crypto Slump

well, even though Bitcoin and others are largely positive territory today, other digital assets as we've been covering the market has been experiencing what some are calling a quote crypto winter end quote. So what happens next and how to firms maintain customer trust? And joining me now is dan O pray, chief product officer at Bitcoin and Crypto company backed. It's a digital asset management platform, dan, thanks so much for coming on the show. Let's start with these market conditions. How is that impacting the products that you offer a box? Thanks so much for having me, Kristin pleasure to be on and yeah, so, so really back there's a kind of a B two B two C platform as you said, we focus on Bitcoin and Crypto as part of what we do, but we also have a strong loyalty business and were active in the payment space as well. So we are far more diversified than most of the peers or the crypto specific companies in our space. And really the synergies that we focus on tend to come between loyalty, crypto and payments. So most of the big partnerships amid the market pullback that we've seen in Bitcoin and other digital assets. How is that impacting some of the products and services that you use? Are you seeing a slowdown in activity? No, most of the partners that we've been working with our large multinational companies that have been actively involved in this space for several years, they know the nature of the market, they know there are peaks and troughs and they really see like us the long term potential for for these these assets and this technology claim to be the use case here. A lot of consumers obviously know how to transact in Bitcoin, they know how to trade Bitcoin but what you're offering to these major multinational corporations, how are they using your products so they can embed back core offering through into their application and provide them to their customers? So we're a platform behind the scenes focusing on sort of core four core crypto product areas around trading around payments, payouts and and earning rewards. So different partners are working with one or multiple of those, each of those different services to integrate into their applications. Are you finding amid the crypto pull back uh the companies that you work with are considering pulling back offering Cryptocurrency as an option or are you still getting an influx of new clients who actually want to add these features to their product line up to their company in some capacity despite a market meltdown? Yeah, I think it interests me and and perhaps surprisingly to some we've seen very little of that, most of our partners are in it for the long term, they've been monitoring the space that they're very familiar with the volatility that comes with it. And so for us really it has been full steam ahead and continuing to work with existing partners and additional conversations as well. Talk to me about some of your key partnerships and other products of services that might be on the horizon. Sure. So we, we have announced partnerships with Pfizer and Astra around the sort of integration into their core banking platforms allow banks and credit unions throughout the US to offer Bitcoin and ethereum trading capabilities which will be going live over the course of the next several months. We partnered with Mastercard around payments and earning crypto on the back of spend. We partner with global payments network as well to provide their net spend customers the ability to to buy crypto directly from their rewards accounts as well. So multiple partnerships that have been going live over the next six months in terms of maintaining trust. Obviously dan you've reiterated several times here that your clients are big multinational corporations, probably they have a lot of cash. They're in a good position to make investments for the long term. But generally what are some of the questions that you've been fielding as the chief product officer at this company backed as we've seen, companies simply go under collapse. I'm thinking about Celsius, I'm thinking about three arrows capital and I'm thinking about some of these stable coins and even the defi space that have come under pressure as well. Yeah, I think that the crippler spaces very large, there's multiple different subsections of it, each with different nuances and different. Uh so our partners in particular have been asking us, they really want to understand, what do we do with the the assets that are custody, how well capitalized are we, how, how strong a position are we to, to weather this storm. And so when you're looking for a partner in this space really, it's important to understand that the most of the recent turmoil has been caused by, by lending in particular under collateralized lending, whether that's through seas by providers directly or into the defi market. And so assets when you're looking for a partner, you want to make sure that those assets that you are custody ng with them are not being lent out into the market or used as collateral for any other loans that they are providing and make sure that that partner is well regulated and compliant with with as many of the local laws as possible. So what is the answer to that question that they have, how well capitalized are you? That is a publicly traded company. And I think investors clearly would want to know how well your company can weather a storm. Yes. So as I mentioned, we are a public company. We went public on the new york stock exchange late last year. So we, we very well capitalized a lot of cash in the bank. As of today, we are building towards the future. We are, you know, looking for continuing to hire and expand and and take advantage of the new opportunities for the great talent that are available on the market as we build out that team and and keep delivering for that long term position. All right, danno, pray, chief product officer back. That's a digital asset management platform listed down here on the floor of the new york stock Exchange, Thanks so much for coming on the show.