Photo credit: Bakkt

Bakkt’s share price soared over 162% on Monday following a report from the Financial Times that Donald Trump’s company is in advanced talks to acquire the crypto exchange. Bakkt Holdings Inc (BKKT) closed up 162.46% at $29.71 on November 18 and continued to climb 16.43% to $34.59 after the bell.

Trump Media and Technology Group Corp (DJT), which operates the social media platform Truth Social, also saw its shares rise 16.65% but lost around 3.5% after hours, according to Google Finance. The Financial Times reported earlier on November 18, citing two sources familiar with the talks, that Trump Media, in which the United States president-elect holds a majority 53% stake, was in advanced discussions for an all-share purchase of Bakkt, owned by Intercontinental Exchange.

Crypto markets have surged since Trump’s election win earlier this month, with Bitcoin up around 30%. Trump’s campaign promised to end regulatory hostility toward the crypto industry and proposed a strategic Bitcoin stockpile, among other pro-crypto initiatives.

If successful, the deal would mark another move by Trump into the crypto space. The incoming president has already licensed his image to multiple non-fungible token (NFT) collections and backed his family’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, from which he and his family are set to receive a 75% cut of its fees.

A spokesperson for Intercontinental Exchange declined to comment on the reported deal. Trump Media and Bakkt did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The valuation of the deal remains unknown, but Bakkt is now valued at over $400 million following its stock surge, despite the exchange struggling to turn a profit. Its crypto custody business never took off, and the firm announced plans to wind it down, with the Financial Times reporting that it wouldn’t be included in the deal with Trump Media.

Trump is expected to face challenges in establishing a Bitcoin reserve, which would require congressional approval. Not every lawmaker on Capitol Hill supports the government holding a historically speculative and volatile asset. Izabella Kaminska, founder of the finance-focused news outlet The Blind Spot, wrote on X that establishing the Bitcoin reserve would be tricky without congressional approval, suggesting that the easiest way around it would be via a special purpose vehicle (SPV).

A special purpose vehicle (SPV), or special purpose entity (SPE), is a company created to isolate risk from its parent company and undertake limited operations, in this case, buying Bitcoin. Kaminska speculated that Trump could use Trump Media as the mechanism to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve without congressional approval. She explained that Trump could theoretically order Trump Media to use Bakkt as an SPV to buy Bitcoin and set up a profit transfer agreement to donate the company’s capital gains to the US government.

“If people still think this is insane, I don’t think they appreciate just how much privatization is coming in the Trump administration,” Kaminska said.

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