On Thursday, Kelly Loeffler, the CEO of Bakkt, announced that a former engineering executive at PayPal and Google will join the team. Loeffler shared the news in a blog post on Medium.
Mike Blandina, a former engineering executive at PayPal and Google, has joined Bakkt to bring the digital asset platform to the next level. Blandina is an engineering veteran with more than 25 years of experience in payments across product, engineering, strategy and operations.
According to the blogpost, Mike Blandina has joined Bakkt as its chief product officer (CPO):
“I’m pleased to share the news that Mike Blandina has joined as Chief Product Officer. As our CPO, Mike will lead our efforts to converge a trusted ecosystem for digital assets with payments use cases, two elements of Bakkt that help bring real world applications to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We are thrilled to have Mike as a leader on our team as we build an innovative platform for securing and transacting with digital assets.”
Blandina is most known for serving as head of payments and credit engineering at global digital payments operator PayPal, as well as at Google, where he worked as director of engineering for Google Wallet.
In the blogpost, Loeffler also mentioned that the launch of Bakkt is coming closer each day:
“As we work through regulatory approvals, we are mindful that the infrastructure we are building has the potential to create more opportunities for digital assets to grow in relevance and trust — by being more secure, investible and useful. As a former marathoner, this point in time recalls the stage in the training regimen when you’re putting in long runs with your training team. Race day is approaching, and there is more work to be done.”
On March 31, Kelly Loeffler, the CEO of Bakkt, released the platform’s progress report. Loeffler mentioned that although progress is being made, the official launch date is not clear (yet).
