Akshay Naheta, a former executive at SoftBank, has been appointed as co-chief executive officer of Bakkt, a move signaling the company’s effort to revitalize their struggling cryptocurrency trading and custody platform.
In a press release issued on March 19th, Bakkt announced Naheta’s appointment, noting that he will serve alongside current CEO Andy Main and join the company’s board of directors. Prior to his role at Bakkt, Naheta founded Distributed Technologies Research, a company focused on building global payments infrastructure. Main expressed confidence in this new leadership structure. “We believe that Akshay joining the leadership team and integration of DTR’s technology with Bakkt will propel us from a leading crypto technology platform and liquidity provider into a more comprehensive, utility-based, institutional digital assets trading and payments platform.”
Naheta’s firm is planning technological integration with Bakkt’s trading and brokerage services, contingent upon regulatory approvals.
At SoftBank, Naheta oversaw a $4 billion investment in 2017 in Nvidia, which generated a $3 billion profit. He also led investments in Arm Holdings.
Bakkt, which went public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), has experienced a significant decline in its stock price, plummeting over 62% this year. Moreover, the firm has lost key clients, including Bank of America and Webull, although it maintains valuable regulatory permits, such as the BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services.
