Over the years, Square (NYSE:SQ) managed to emerge as one of the most innovative payments company in the United States, and it is no surprise that the company came up with Square Crypto in 2019. Back in March this year, Square made the announcement that it was going to go into crypto, and now the company has started hiring to kickstart the project.

Completes Inaugural Developer Team

The company announced that it has completed the ‘inaugural developer team’ for the project and has made key appointments already. The development team will be involved in developing the base for Bitcoin development, and it is going to be open source in nature.

One of the appointments to the development team is that of Arik Sosman, who previously worked at BitGo and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB). In addition to Sosman, the other two people added to the Square Crypto team include Jeffrey Czyz and Valentine Wallace. Wallace used to work for Lightning Labs while Czyz had been associated with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Sosman shares his thoughts after having joined this small team. He said, “I’m extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to join this amazing team, and to focus on contributing to the most important cryptocurrency and ecosystem.”

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That being said, the company had earlier sent out a tweet on Thursday in which it stated that it was still unsure about its first crypto project. The new business created by Square is going to be completely separate from its core payments business.

However, it is still a major development for the crypto space and is another indication that some of the more serious tech-based firms in the world have grasped its importance. The other existing team members include Steve Lee and Matt Corallo. Lee stated that at this point in time, the team is prepared to take up any crypto project as long as it goes towards the improvement of Bitcoin.

Featured image: DepositPhotos © Jirsak

Prominent analyst Tom Lee believes the launch of Bakkt will help build trust towards crypto trading among institutional investors.

Lee, a renowned Bitcoin bull and co-founder of the research firm Fundstrat, tweeted his enthusiasm for the long-awaited crypto services platform: “I am very positive on @Bakkt and its ability to improve trust with institutions to crypto.” Bakkt is owned by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and goes live on September 23, having already launched its crypto warehouse service, which saw over $1 billion USD worth of Bitcoin deposited in one day.

Many involved parties in the world of crypto are of the belief that Bakkt will have a substantial impact on the future of cryptocurrency. If the platform functions as planned, it will provide traders with a secure and monitored exchange on which to trade Bitcoin. With Bakkt futures, traders will be able to channel their payments and guarantee their Bitcoin will be delivered through the same ICE protocols that protect contracts traded by oil companies. The platform will also employ the same cybersecurity measures used on the New York Stock Exchange.

Bakkt was first unveiled over a year ago with ICE initially hoping to launch it in December 2018. However, the platform was faced with a series of regulatory delays that led to the launch being delayed until now. ICE announced in May that it had self-certified its futures contracts and in July began user acceptance testing to ensure that users could communicate with Bakkt’s infrastructure, paving the way for the exchange to begin taking on customers.

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Not everyone is as bullish about Bakkt as Lee, after a recent Twitter poll by Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano showed an almost even split of 3,500 votes on whether it would lead to an increase, decrease, or no movement for the price of Bitcoin. Some of the bigger skeptics believe that Bakkt could be used by institutions to short the price of Bitcoin, similar to how CME’s futures were shorted before the Bitcoin collapse in January 2018.

Featured Image: DepositPhotos © AntonMatyukha