ICE Founder: 'We're Kind of Agnostic' on Bitcoin's Price

"We're kind of agnostic on price."

Sprecher appeared with Kelly Loeffler, the CEO of Bakkt, the bitcoin futures platform backed by ICE that is gearing up for a planned launch early next year.

Sprecher was responding to a question from moderator Michael J. Casey about the recent drop in bitcoin prices.

According to Loeffler, a focus on price isn't really a factor for Bakkt, which in August unveiled its plan to create "An open and regulated, global ecosystem for digital assets,".

"The price is being expressed but there's a lot of missing infrastructure and use cases," she remarked.

The appearance by Loeffler and Sprecher - the latter of whom's exchange operator giant is backing Bakkt - covered a range of topics, including the push to appeal to institutional investors, whether the firm is competing with crypto startup Coinbase, and the reasoning behind its announcement last week that it was pushing a previously-announced December launch window to late January.

As for what Bakkt is aiming to achieve - apart from the launch of futures products as well as planned initiatives with companies like Starbucks to develop payment-focused use cases - Loefller highlighted the push for price discovery to occur in markets that are regulated at the federal level.

"If you think about commodities or equity indices, the S&P500, that price is established in a federally regulated market, we don't have that in the crypto market today. That's what we're focused on bringing along with a myriad of other features." Loeffler explained.

The panel ended on a question central to Bakkt's launch: why it's focusing on bitcoin initially.

According to Sprecher, that's because of the broader market's acceptance of bitcoin as the top cryptocurrency.