比特幣可能馬上就要突破限制，成為主流貨幣了。至少這是一家即將成立的新企業(yè)立下的目標(biāo)，這家公司由華爾街上一家相當(dāng)有份量的機(jī)構(gòu)創(chuàng)立，還獲得了美國多家領(lǐng)軍企業(yè)的支持。

8月3日上午，擁有紐交所和其它全球交易市場的交易界巨頭ICE交易所（ICE）宣布正在組建名為Bakkat的一家新公司。Bakkt預(yù)計于11月開業(yè)，將為比特幣提供一個受到聯(lián)邦政府管制的市場。ICE希望通過成立Bakkt，將比特幣變成可以信賴并廣泛使用的全球貨幣。

為實現(xiàn)這一目標(biāo)，ICE和科技、咨詢、零售業(yè)的巨頭微軟、波士頓咨詢集團(tuán)、星巴克以及堡壘投資集團(tuán)（Fortress Investment Group）、 Eagle Seven和海納國際集團(tuán)（ Susquehanna International Group）都達(dá)成了合作關(guān)系，但I(xiàn)CE未立刻披露各投資伙伴的總投資額。

作為游戲的主要參與者，世界各大金融機(jī)構(gòu)卻都對比特幣敬而遠(yuǎn)之。為了讓比特幣成為健康安全的金融產(chǎn)品，成立Bakkt勢在必行。Bakkt希望可以為基金經(jīng)理掃清道理，讓他們將比特幣共有基金、養(yǎng)老金、ETF作為受到嚴(yán)格監(jiān)管的主流投資產(chǎn)品推出市場。

再下一步可能是用比特幣取代信用卡。

“Bakkt相當(dāng)于一個可以拓展的入口，通過提升數(shù)字資產(chǎn)的效率、安全性和使用范圍，讓機(jī)構(gòu)、商戶、顧客利用Bakkt參與使用數(shù)字資產(chǎn)?！盜CE主管數(shù)字資產(chǎn)的凱莉·呂弗勒在宣布成立該公司的新聞發(fā)布會上說，萊弗勒將出任Bakkt的CEO。“我們在攜手打造一個開放平臺，力圖在全球市場和全球商務(wù)中釋放數(shù)字貨幣的變革潛力?！?

萊弗勒在《財富》雜志專訪中說道，ICE在過去14個月里一直在秘密“建立基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施”，目的是為Bakkt提供發(fā)展動力。公司的名字前兩個星期才剛剛定下來。萊弗勒解釋說，Bakkt是“資產(chǎn)支持債券（asset-backed securities）”里“backed”（意為支持）的同音詞，意在獲得客戶高度信任的投資。

如果Bakkt的藍(lán)圖能夠如期推進(jìn)，將會出現(xiàn)大量新比特幣基金，市場被壓抑的對加密貨幣的需求將得到釋放，比特幣將成為一個簡單安全的方案供日常投資者選擇，尤其是將要拿到首筆401（k）基金的千禧一代。華爾街可以利用比特幣的推廣普及，將比特幣作為股票債券的替代產(chǎn)品，實現(xiàn)巨額交易。機(jī)構(gòu)的大量買入賣出反過來可以撫平比特幣價格的瘋狂波動，減少人們對于比特幣投資的恐懼。

加密貨幣的波動既催生了個人投機(jī)分子，又嚇跑了機(jī)構(gòu)資金。2017年秋天，比特幣的價格從6400美元漲到20000美元，一飛升天，之后又跌落至7700美元左右。

如果能打入401（k）和工人退休金賬戶（IRA）市場，Bakkt就打了大勝仗。但這家新公司的雄心抱負(fù)甚至不限于此，他們希望可以利用比特幣顛覆優(yōu)化現(xiàn)在的零售支付市場，推動消費者從刷信用卡轉(zhuǎn)為掃描比特幣app。市場前景十分廣闊：全球消費者每年需要支付高達(dá)25萬億美元的信用卡手續(xù)費或在線購物手續(xù)費。

Bakkt的創(chuàng)始人告訴本刊，贏得機(jī)構(gòu)投資者的戰(zhàn)爭是兩步計劃中的第一步。他們對第二步計劃略有點含糊其辭。但星巴克和微軟的參與釋放了強(qiáng)烈的信號，說明Bakkt將力求實現(xiàn)消費者線上線下支付方式的變革。咖啡界巨擘星巴克在鼓勵顧客使用手機(jī)而非信用卡支付的變革上處于行業(yè)領(lǐng)先地位。微軟通過其Azure云業(yè)務(wù)，服務(wù)了大量零售商，為它們打理從開發(fā)票到電子商務(wù)等各種各樣的后勤業(yè)務(wù)。

“星巴克作為旗艦零售商，將發(fā)揮重要作用，努力推出實用、可靠、合規(guī)的應(yīng)用，推動消費者將其數(shù)字資產(chǎn)轉(zhuǎn)化為美元并在星巴克消費?！毙前涂酥鞴芎献髋c支付的副總瑪麗亞·史密斯在發(fā)布會上說。

成立Bakkt是ICE創(chuàng)始人、主席兼CEO杰夫·斯普雷徹的想法，斯普雷徹是能夠顛覆行業(yè)的佼佼者。近年來，他引領(lǐng)世界交易所從公開叫價的交易方式轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)殡娮踊灰?，在這個現(xiàn)代化的過程中，無人可以和他媲美。一路走來，他以據(jù)說1美元的價格購買了一家垂死掙扎的電子交易所，把它發(fā)展為價值440億美元的全球交易和數(shù)據(jù)帝國。“25年來，他從默默無聞成長為世界上最強(qiáng)大的交易界創(chuàng)業(yè)家?！盩abb集團(tuán)的首席咨詢師拉里·塔博說：“他還沒失敗過。”

Bitcoin could be on the verge of breaking through as a mainstream currency. At least that’s the goal of a startup that is soon to be launched by one of the most powerful players on Wall Street, with backing from some of America’s leading companies.

On the morning of August 3rd, the Intercontinental Exchange—the trading colossus that owns the New York Stock Exchange and other global marketplaces—announced that it is forming a new company called Bakkt. The new venture, which is expected to launch in November, will offer a federally regulated market for Bitcoin. With the creation of Bakkt, ICE aims to transform Bitcoin into a trusted global currency with broad usage.

To achieve that vision, ICE is partnering with heavyweights from the worlds of technology, consulting, and retail: Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, and Starbucks. ICE did not immediately disclose the total investment of the investment partners, a group which also includes Fortress Investment Group, Eagle Seven, and Susquehanna International Group—or the ownership stakes.

The founding imperative for Bakkt will be to make Bitcoin a sound and secure offering for key constituents that now mostly shun it—the world’s big financial institutions. The goal is to clear the way for major money managers to offer Bitcoin mutual funds, pension funds, and ETFs, as highly regulated, mainstream investments.

The next step after that could be using Bitcoin to replace your credit card.

“Bakkt is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant, and consumer participation in digital assets by promoting greater efficiency, security, and utility,” said Kelly Loeffler, ICE’s head of digital assets, who will serve as CEO of Bakkt, in the press release announcing the launch. “We are collaborating to build an open platform that helps unlock the transformative potential of digital assets across global markets and commerce.”

In an exclusive interview, Loeffler (pronounced “Leffler”) told Fortune that ICE and its partners have been “building the factory” that will power Bakkt in the strictest secrecy for the past 14 months. The name of the company was only decided in the past two weeks. Loeffler explains that “Bakkt” is a play on “backed,” as in “asset-backed securities,” and it’s meant to evoke a highly-trusted investment.

If the Bakkt blueprint works as planned, a panoply of new Bitcoin funds would tap the pent-up demand for the cryptocurrency, making it a safe and easy choice for everyday investors—notably millennials getting their first 401(k)s. Wall Street could then tap Bitcoin’s popularity as an alternative to stocks and bonds to generate giant trading volumes. And that flood of institutional buying and selling, in turn, would take the terror out of Bitcoin by smoothing its wild swings in price.

The volatility of the cryptocurrency has both attracted individual speculators and scared off institutional money. In the fall of 2017, the price of Bitcoin spiked from $6,400 to nearly $20,000; it has since fallen back to around $7,700.

Cracking the 401(k) and IRA market for cryptocurrency would be a huge win for Bakkt. But the startup’s plans raise the prospect of an even more ambitious goal: Using Bitcoin to streamline and disrupt the world of retail payments by moving consumers from swiping credit cards to scanning their Bitcoin apps. The market opportunity is gigantic: Consumers worldwide are paying lofty credit card or online-shopping fees on $25 trillion a year in annual purchases.

Bakkt’s founders tell Fortune that the institutional investor campaign is the first of two phases. They’re a little coy about the second phase. But the presence of Starbucks and Microsoft strongly suggests that Bakkt will strive to revolutionize the way consumers pay at the mall and online. The coffee giant is already a leading player in encouraging customers to pay with the their smartphones rather than their credit cards. And Microsoft, through its Azure cloud business, serves a huge base of retailers, handling back-office tasks from invoice processing to e-commerce.

“As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted, and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into U.S. dollars for use at Starbucks,” said Maria Smith, vice president, Partnerships and Payments for Starbucks, in the press release.

Bakkt is the brainchild of Jeff Sprecher, the founder, chairman, and CEO of ICE, and a disrupter par excellence. Sprecher (pronounced “Sprecker”) stands alone as the leading force in modernizing the world’s exchanges in recent years from open-outcry pits into super-efficient electronic marketplaces. Along the way, Sprecher built a flailing electricity exchange that he reportedly purchased for $1 into a global trading and data empire now worth $44 billion. “In 25 years he’s gone from nothing to the most powerful exchange entrepreneur in the world,” says Larry Tabb, chief of consultancy the Tabb Group. “He hasn’t failed yet.”

在金融交易所行業(yè)，ICE的收入在全球排在第二位，位居芝加哥商業(yè)交易所（CME）之后。ICE擁有12家交易所，由6家清算所提供服務(wù)。而且，斯普雷徹不僅實現(xiàn)了增長，還實現(xiàn)了贏利，可謂是公司股東的一大幸事。2006年上市后，ICE的年回報率為24.1%。公司去年凈利率高達(dá)54%，在標(biāo)普500指數(shù)的組成公司中排名第四位。

雖然股票債券交易市場業(yè)務(wù)極度分散，ICE仍然橫跨各個領(lǐng)域，建立了交易帝國。紐交所是目前全世界最大的股票市場，每天交易量為15億股，幾乎占全球股票交易的四分之一。ICE還擁有中型企業(yè)股票交易的龍頭平臺美國證券交易所（NYSE American）和全球最大的ETF交易市場Arca。ICE于2007年收購美國期貨交易所后，成為了糖、咖啡、棉花等“軟性”農(nóng)產(chǎn)品期貨的全品類期貨全球交易領(lǐng)頭羊。ICE歐洲期貨交易所是國際油價基準(zhǔn)布倫特原油的主要全球市場。

現(xiàn)在這位具有遠(yuǎn)見卓識的帝國締造者再次開啟征程，力圖讓華爾街的資產(chǎn)經(jīng)理和普通消費者愛上比特幣。

斯普雷徹和他的投資伙伴們把這項獨一無二的使命交給了一位新手CEO：凱莉·呂弗勒，她也是斯普雷徹在商業(yè)和生活中的靈魂伴侶。早在2002年ICE還沒站穩(wěn)腳跟的時候，凱莉作為公司高管就為斯普雷徹保駕護(hù)航。他們在2004年結(jié)婚。呂弗勒長期主管ICE的市場營銷、投資關(guān)系和通訊業(yè)務(wù)。現(xiàn)在她要放棄在ICE的職務(wù)，掌管Bakkt。

過去兩個月里，斯普雷徹和呂弗勒夫婦接受了本刊長達(dá)數(shù)小時的專訪。他們著重強(qiáng)調(diào)了Bakkt如何能為比特幣提供它們正需要的工具，使它們能得到人們的廣泛接受。

最近一次和夫妻二人在紐交所豪華的交易室會面時，斯普雷徹特別強(qiáng)調(diào)呂弗勒參與了ICE的下步戰(zhàn)略規(guī)劃?！皠P莉我們倆謀劃了五年，才找到適合數(shù)字貨幣的戰(zhàn)略?！彼蛊绽讖卣f。

乍一看這一對的搭配有點不尋常：呂弗勒47歲，穿上高跟鞋大概6英尺高，比他63歲的丈夫高出許多。但很快就能看出他們的相似處，他們都熱衷于推動需要大量修正才能成功的宏大想法?！拔沂莻€工程師，喜歡修修補(bǔ)補(bǔ)?！彼蛊绽讖卣f，他周末會花時間修自己的老古董保時捷跑車?！氨忍貛攀莻€典型的壞模型，如果修好了，它可以改變世界。”

呂弗勒補(bǔ)充道：“杰夫我們倆會因為宏大的議題感到激動，而對于大多數(shù)人而言，這些問題可能無解?！?

如果Bakkt成功，這將是一位（或一群）神秘的程序員在2009年化名中本聰發(fā)明了比特幣之后動蕩不安的幣圈迎來的最大發(fā)展。

斯普雷徹想把加密貨幣帶給大眾的想法和比特幣支持者們的通常想法背道而馳。純粹主義者支持比特幣的“分散化”結(jié)構(gòu)，堅決反對把大交易所放在比特幣投資或支付體系的中心?！霸诮灰字虚g設(shè)置監(jiān)護(hù)人進(jìn)行規(guī)范交易違悖了比特幣的基本理念?！憋L(fēng)投公司Draper Associates的加密貨幣分析員阿布舍克· 普尼亞說?！氨忍貛诺脑O(shè)計理念是去中心化，沒有中間人收取費用。在規(guī)范的交易所進(jìn)行交易的方式可能會流行一陣子，但無法代表未來。比特幣的未來是堅持個人對個人交易的原始理念?！?

斯普雷徹和呂弗勒不同意這個觀點，他們認(rèn)為需要的恰恰是一個強(qiáng)大的中心基礎(chǔ)架構(gòu)，ICE及其合作伙伴將提供這個架構(gòu)。難點在于讓銀行、資產(chǎn)經(jīng)理、捐助機(jī)構(gòu)熱情接受比特幣?！拔覀兘灰捉鐚@個問題看法不同?！眳胃ダ照f。

ICE的主要客戶是大機(jī)構(gòu)，斯普雷徹和呂弗勒了解他們對于加密貨幣的看法。他們之所以認(rèn)為比特幣能夠作為主流投資蓬勃發(fā)展，因為大基金經(jīng)理意識到他們現(xiàn)在和將來的投資者中，有幾千萬人都想擁有比特幣，前提是它們能被包裝成共有基金或ETF。呂弗勒說：“這些機(jī)構(gòu)覺得比特幣就像金店銀店一樣，充滿吸引力。”

Today ICE is the world’s second largest owner of financial exchanges by revenue behind the CME, and one of the largest purveyors of market data. ICE’s 2017 revenues of $4.6 billion divide pretty evenly between those two main franchises. ICE owns twelve exchanges, served by six clearing houses. And to the delight of shareholders, Sprecher has delivered profitability as much as growth. Since going public in 2006, ICE has delivered annual total returns of 24.1%. The company’s towering 54% margin of net profits ranked fourth in the S&P 500 last year.

Even in the heavily-fragmented galaxy of stock and bond trading, ICE has established a Brobdingnagian footprint. The NYSE is by far world’s largest stock market, trading 1.5 billion shares a day—or nearly one-in-four of all equity transactions. ICE also owns NYSE American, the leading platform for mid-cap companies, as well as Arca, the world’s largest marketplace for ETFs. ICE is the world leader in almost all categories of futures for “soft” agricultural commodities such as sugar, coffee, and cotton, chiefly through its 2007 acquisition of the New York Board of Trade. And ICE Futures Europe is the dominant global marketplace for the Brent crude, the global oil price benchmark.

Now Sprecher, the visionary who assembled this empire, is crusading to make Wall Street asset managers and Main Street consumers love Bitcoin.

Sprecher and his investment partners are putting this one-of-a-kind mission in the hands of a first-time CEO who’s Sprecher’s soulmate in both business and in life: Kelly Loeffler. The ICE executive has ridden shotgun alongside Sprecher since the company’s fledgling days in 2002. In 2004, they married. Loeffler long ran marketing, investor relations, and communications for ICE. Now she’s giving up her ICE roles to run Bakkt.

Over the past two months, Sprecher and Loeffler sat for several hours of exclusive interviews with Fortune. Above all, they emphasized how Bakkt, in part by exploiting ICE’s trading infrastructure, could provide precisely the tools Bitcoin needs to achieve broad acceptance.

At a recent meeting with the couple in the plush Bond Room at the NYSE, Sprecher stressed that Loeffler has been a collaborator in charting ICE’s next big move. “Kelly and I brainstormed for five years to find a strategy for digital currencies,” says Sprecher.

At first glance, the pair present an unusual twosome: At over six-feet in her high heels, Loeffler, 47, stands much taller than her 63-year old husband. But their bond is quickly apparent—a passion for gig ideas that need lots of tinkering to succeed. “I’m an engineer who likes to fix things that are broken,” says Sprecher, who repairs his vintage Porsche racecars on weekends. “And Bitcoin was the epitome of a broken model that if fixed, could change the world.”

Adds Loeffler, “Jeff and I get excited about big things that for most people, seem to have no answer.”

If they succeed with Bakkt, it could be the biggest development in the churning, hazardous frontier of cryptocurrencies since a mysterious programmer (or programmers) under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled Bitcoin in 2009.

Sprecher’s plan for bringing crypto to the masses runs contrary to what Bitcoin supporters typically champion. The purists favor Bitcoin’s “distributed” architecture, and adamantly oppose putting a big exchange at the center of the both the Bitcoin investment and payments systems. “A regulated exchange with a custodian in the middle contradicts the basic idea of Bitcoin,” says Abhishek Punia, a crypto-currency analyst with venture capital firm Draper Associates. “Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized, without intermediaries taking fees. A regulated exchange may be popular for a short period of time, but it’s not the future. The future will be the original idea of a peer-to-peer network.”

Sprecher and Loeffler disagree, arguing that a strong central infrastructure is precisely what’s needed, and that ICE and its partners are the ones to supply it. The challenge is getting the banks, asset managers, and endowments to embrace Bitcoin. “Being from the exchange world, we looked at the problem differently,” says Loeffler.

The big institutions are ICE’s main customers, and Sprecher and Loeffler understood their thinking about crypto-currencies. They reckoned that Bitcoin could thrive as a mainstream investment because the big money managers recognize that ten of millions of their current and future investors want to own it––if it can be packaged as mutual funds and ETFs. “The institutions saw that Bitcoin had lots of appeal as a store of value like gold or silver,” says Loeffler.

為了了解數(shù)字貨幣的運作，ICE2015年初在美國最大的數(shù)字貨幣市場Coinbase里購買了少量股權(quán)?！癈oinbase的顧客數(shù)量是嘉信的兩倍?！眳胃ダ照f。“大多數(shù)開了賬戶的用戶都是千禧一代，做點加密貨幣的小投資?！?

斯普雷徹補(bǔ)充道：“千禧一代不信任傳統(tǒng)金融機(jī)構(gòu)。為了贏得他們的信任，銀行、經(jīng)紀(jì)人、資產(chǎn)經(jīng)理可以使用這代人能夠信任的貨幣，比如說比特幣。使用數(shù)字貨幣會讓他們覺得興奮?！?

目前，富達(dá)投資、先鋒集團(tuán)等資產(chǎn)管理公司鮮少使用加密貨幣。斯普雷徹認(rèn)為，原因在于“比特幣沒有良好的市場結(jié)構(gòu)?！睂τ陬櫩投?，用美元兌比特幣太貴了，其中一部分原因交易太分散、交易場所過多、每間機(jī)構(gòu)的交易量過低。他指出，有200多家市場針對十幾種主要數(shù)字貨幣進(jìn)行交易，包括瑞波幣（Ripple）、萊特幣（Litecoin）等?！澳呐率潜忍貛牛煌袌龅膬r格也不同?！彼蛊绽讖卣f，“如果用美元兌比特幣，你最多需要支付6%的價差，這意味著比特幣需要漲6%你才能回本?！?

目前加密貨幣主要被部分愿意鋌而走險的交易者和一些對沖基金用于投機(jī)，這些對沖基金持有全球總價值約3億美元的數(shù)字貨幣總量的80%。（比特幣是目前最大的加密貨幣，近期總價值約為1340億美元。）由于投機(jī)行為大行其道，流動性又相對較差，比特幣誕生后的十年里經(jīng)歷了四個熊市?！敖Y(jié)果造成了信任危機(jī)?！眳胃ダ照f。

此外，比特幣這種隨心所欲的不羈氣質(zhì)和華爾街小心翼翼的后金融危機(jī)思維產(chǎn)生了沖突，華爾街想采用一切手段來保護(hù)投資者的利益。呂弗勒說：“大機(jī)構(gòu)的人們認(rèn)為加密貨幣不那么招人喜歡。”

更不用說華爾街上還有人認(rèn)為加密貨幣是“小孩子”玩兒的，認(rèn)為玩家的動機(jī)可以歸納為：“讓銀行見鬼去吧，咱們自己玩?！?

但斯普雷徹和呂弗勒認(rèn)為，碎片化的市場和不符合常規(guī)文化并非金融機(jī)構(gòu)回避比特幣的真正原因。他們相信有大批粉絲想要投資比特幣或其它數(shù)字貨幣，但沒有合適的產(chǎn)品。解決辦法：建立新的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)，為比特幣提供ICE交易所的股票、債券、商品期貨等產(chǎn)品擁有的保護(hù)措施。這樣能在少量的零售顧客和冒進(jìn)的對沖基金外為更多投資者打開大門。

那么為什么先鋒和Blackrocks不采用“做好服務(wù)，顧客自會前來”的策略？斯普雷徹和呂弗勒認(rèn)為原因根深蒂固，但也可以修正。斯普雷徹說：“缺了兩個要素：在官方交易所交易，在機(jī)構(gòu)層面為數(shù)字貨幣提供安全儲藏?！?

斯普雷徹說，簡單說，如果大基金經(jīng)理無法在聯(lián)邦監(jiān)管的交易平臺上購買代幣或者無法將投資人的代幣儲存在能夠確保其絕對安全的平臺賬戶里，他們就不會成立數(shù)字貨幣基金。

如今，比特幣、以太幣等加密貨幣的代幣在主要期貨或債券交易平臺上完全無法交易。官方期貨交易平臺受美國商品期貨交易委員會（CFTC）監(jiān)管，證券平臺受美國證券交易委員會（SEC）監(jiān)管。人們用美元或歐元交易數(shù)字貨幣的場所被稱為“交易所”，但哪怕是其中像Coinbase和Gemini等規(guī)模最大的場所也只是在各州法律框架下獲得執(zhí)照的交易市場而已。

這些平臺采用的監(jiān)管機(jī)制分為三種：第一，Coinbase和許多其它交易市場在相應(yīng)的州獲得了“匯款機(jī)構(gòu)”執(zhí)照；第二，卡梅倫和泰勒·文克萊沃斯成立的Gemini在家鄉(xiāng)紐約州獲得了信托公司執(zhí)照，它也因此可以在其它多個州運營；第三種是“互換交易執(zhí)行基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施（SEF）”，一會再細(xì)講。

To study how digital currencies work, ICE in early 2015 took a minority stake in the largest U.S.-based marketplace for digital currencies, Coinbase. “Coinbase has twice as many customers as Charles Schwab,” says Loeffler. “Many of the people who have opened accounts on Coinbase are millennials who use it to make small investments in crypto-currencies.”

Adds Sprecher: “Millennials don’t trust traditional financial institutions. To gain their trust, banks, brokerages, and asset managers can use a currency that millennials believe in, like Bitcoin. Using digital currencies brings a lot of sizzle.”

So far, cryptocurrencies have gained little traction with asset managers like Fidelity and Vanguard. The reason, says Sprecher, is that “Bitcoin does not have a good market structure.” For consumers, it’s expensive to exchange dollars for Bitcoin, in part because trading is spread thinly across too many venues that individually do too little trading. He notes that more than 200 marketplaces trade over a dozen major digital currencies, from ether to Ripple to Litecoin. “Even for Bitcoin, different markets are posting lots of different prices,” says Sprecher. “And you can pay an up to 6% spread to exchange dollars for Bitcoin, meaning Bitcoin needs to rise by as much 6% before you break even.”

Cryptocurrencies today serve primarily as a vehicle for speculation by daredevil traders, and by the hedge funds that own 80% of the roughly $300 billion in digital currencies worldwide. (Bitcoin is by far the biggest cryptocurrency for now, with a recent total value of around $134 billion.) The combination of rampant betting and relatively arid liquidity sent Bitcoin careening through four bear markets in the decade since its creation. “The result is a crisis of confidence,” says Loeffler.

In addition, the freewheeling Bitcoin ethos clashes with the ultra-cautious, post-financial crisis mindset on Wall Street that emphasizes safeguarding the investor at all costs. “People at the big institutions have the view that cryptocurrencies can be unsavory actors procured by elicit means,” says Loeffler.

Not to mention that some on Wall Street still view cryptocurrencies as being run by “kids” whose motivation can be summarized as, “Let’s screw the banks and do it all ourselves.”

But Sprecher and Loeffler concluded that fragmented marketplaces and alien culture weren’t the real reasons the institutions avoided Bitcoin. In their view, a broad universe of fans wanted to invest in Bitcoin or other digital tokens, but couldn’t find the right products. The solution: A new ecosystem that provided Bitcoin the same protections afforded the stocks, bonds, and commodities futures traded on ICE’s exchanges. That would open an investor universe far beyond a relatively small group of retail customers and adventurous hedge funds.

So why aren’t the Vanguards and Blackrocks taking a “serve them and they shall come” approach? For Sprecher and Loeffler, the reason is fundamental—and fixable. “Two things are missing,” says Sprecher. “Trading on an official exchange, and safe storage for digital currencies on an institutional scale.”

Put simply, Sprecher says, the big money managers won’t create digital currency funds unless they can first buy the tokens on a federally regulated exchange, and, second, store the tokens for their investors in accounts rendered super-secure by the safeguards provided by those exchanges.

Today, the tokens for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether aren’t traded at all on the major futures or securities exchanges. Official exchanges are overseen by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for futures, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for securities. The venues where folks exchange dollars or Euros for digital currencies—including the biggest ones such as Coinbase and Gemini—are often called “exchanges,” but they’re actually marketplaces that are licensed under state laws.

These platforms fall under three main regulatory regimes: First, Coinbase and many other marketplaces are licensed in the individual states as “money transmitters.” Second, Gemini, the platform founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is licensed in its home state of New York as trust company, and that designation is its passport to operate in a number of other states. The third category are markets called SEFs; more on them in a bit.

這些交易平臺不受兩個聯(lián)邦監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)證SEC或CFTC監(jiān)管的原因，與兩個機(jī)構(gòu)如何對加密貨幣進(jìn)行分類有關(guān)。負(fù)責(zé)監(jiān)管股票、債券和其他證券的SEC表示，比特幣和以太幣這兩種最大的加密貨幣不是證券。SEC對其他加密貨幣持觀望態(tài)度。目前，任何一家交易市場均未獲得SEC的許可，均無法作為受監(jiān)管的證券市場進(jìn)行數(shù)字代幣交易。

雖然比特幣不被認(rèn)定為證券，但被認(rèn)為是商品。CFTC的職責(zé)是監(jiān)管商品期貨和這些期貨的期權(quán)，涵蓋范圍極廣，包括從原油到大豆到黃金等各種商品的合約。由于比特幣的商品屬性，比特幣期貨只能在受到CFTC監(jiān)管的期貨交易所交易，這些交易所被稱為指定的合約市場。（與其他貨幣交易市場類似，在“現(xiàn)貨”基礎(chǔ)上簡單地將美元或歐元兌換成比特幣的場所不需要由 CFTC 監(jiān)管。）

今天，芝加哥董事會期權(quán)交易所和芝加哥商業(yè)交易所都可以交易比特幣期貨合約。合約的結(jié)算并非真的使用比特幣。交易雙方根據(jù)比特幣價格的變動以現(xiàn)金結(jié)算。所以實際上，人們只是用這種合約對加密貨幣的未來價格走勢下注。

比特幣被認(rèn)定為商品，給ICE帶來了大量機(jī)遇：它現(xiàn)在經(jīng)營著全球最大的兩家商品期貨交易所——ICE美國期貨交易所和ICE歐洲期貨交易所。對于斯普雷徹和呂弗勒而言，這些交易所能夠提供比特幣交易需要的保護(hù)措施，從而實現(xiàn)像呂弗勒所說的 “讓機(jī)構(gòu)交易的引擎運轉(zhuǎn)起來”。

重要的是要明白SEC或CFTC監(jiān)管的大型交易所可以提供三種受到嚴(yán)格監(jiān)督的服務(wù)： 交易、清算和安全儲存（證券托管或期貨倉庫) 。交易所在交易中要確?；鸾?jīng)理點擊的價格是他們?yōu)楣善被蚱谪浐霞s支付的費用。交易所也針對清算和托管或交割倉儲制定了嚴(yán)格的規(guī)則。這些規(guī)則必須通過SEC或CFTC的批準(zhǔn)，并受其監(jiān)管。

聯(lián)邦監(jiān)管的交易所要求清算服務(wù)能夠有效消除買賣雙方的信貸風(fēng)險。清算所保證賣方能按照期貨合約的規(guī)定交付糖、咖啡或黃金，買方能夠全額付款。如果不能執(zhí)行，則由交易所的會員貿(mào)易公司和交易所所有者（這個例子中為ICE）共同出資創(chuàng)辦的清算所將兌付商品或現(xiàn)金。安全倉儲分成兩種情況： 股票和債券的托管以及期貨的倉儲。紐交所等受到SEC監(jiān)管的交易所要求由共同基金或養(yǎng)老基金將股票或債券保存在道富銀行、紐約梅隆銀行等獨立托管機(jī)構(gòu)的超級安全賬戶里。

關(guān)于期貨，ICE和其它受CFTC監(jiān)管的交易所規(guī)定，在合同到期應(yīng)當(dāng)交付貨物時，締約一方要購買的咖啡、黃金或白銀應(yīng)儲存在注冊倉庫或其他儲存設(shè)施中。實際上，無論買方是像先鋒這樣的財務(wù)管理公司還是嘉吉這樣的用戶，都可以在倉庫里實現(xiàn)金條或棉花的接取。如果無法實現(xiàn)交付或者賣方不付款，同樣由清算所彌補(bǔ)損失。

Bakkt將為比特幣交易提供首個一體化方案，方案中既包括一家受聯(lián)邦政府監(jiān)管的大型交易所，又包括該交易所監(jiān)管的清算和存儲機(jī)構(gòu)。ICE擁有六家清算所，它們與美國ICE期貨交易所和ICE旗下的其它交易所垂直整合。通過利用由CFTC監(jiān)管的加密貨幣期貨交易所，Bakkt能夠提供按照基金經(jīng)理的要求提供雙重安全保障。第一層保障是通過ICE期貨交易所的正規(guī)經(jīng)紀(jì)人購買證券或商品（此處為購買數(shù)字代幣）。

交易所規(guī)定儲戶需要提交護(hù)照及公司成立文件，同時說明購買資產(chǎn)的資金來源。他們還關(guān)注追蹤非法活動的模式。比如，如果一個投資者在同一個柜臺上屢次因為石油交易產(chǎn)生虧損，這些交易可能就含有風(fēng)險，因為“輸家”可能是通過從買主那里獲取回扣進(jìn)行洗錢。

只有由受監(jiān)管交易所全面審查的經(jīng)紀(jì)人和期貨經(jīng)紀(jì)商（FCMs）才允許作為ICE美國期貨交易所的會員在所里進(jìn)行交易。在SEC和CFTC監(jiān)管的交易所，得到交易所許可的會員們可以與對方交易，他們代表的是基金經(jīng)理，反過來也對基金經(jīng)理進(jìn)行充分審查。因此，如果可以向比特幣的投資者提供同樣的保護(hù)措施，他們就能放心確認(rèn)他們要買的比特幣不是通過黑入別人賬戶偷來的。

第二個關(guān)鍵點是為數(shù)字貨幣提供受到監(jiān)管的存儲設(shè)施。呂弗勒表示： “是否擁有一個合格的倉庫是機(jī)構(gòu)投資者選擇進(jìn)場或離場的重要原因?！?

Bakkt的做法是配備超級安全的相當(dāng)于密碼箱一樣的倉庫，類似于為投資者存放金條的地下室。期貨交易所的倉庫主要提供兩項服務(wù)，一是確保資產(chǎn)不會被盜。在比特幣的例子里，這意味著要通過多層級網(wǎng)絡(luò)安全手段保護(hù)數(shù)字密碼箱中的貨幣。二是交易所制訂政策和程序，確保可以核實投資者的身份，保證他們儲存在倉庫里等待交付的黃金或石油不是非法所得。

Bakkt計劃在得到委員會和其他監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)批準(zhǔn)后，制訂完整方案，將受到CFTC監(jiān)管的大型交易所、清算所和托管機(jī)構(gòu)都納入方案中。Bakkt將依托美國ICE期貨交易所提供一個新的比特幣交易平臺。它還將提供全面的倉儲服務(wù)，這是ICE目前沒有開展的業(yè)務(wù)。呂弗勒說：“Bakkt的收入來源有兩個，美國ICE期貨交易所的交易費和購買比特幣的用戶將比特幣存儲在Bakkt所支付的倉儲費。”

Bakkt將提供迄今為止最大的比特幣交易市場。但它不會是第一個或唯一一個 CFTC監(jiān)管的比特幣交易平臺。多德-弗蘭克法案創(chuàng)造了被稱為掉期執(zhí)行設(shè)施或SEFs的交易市場，此類市場由CFTC監(jiān)管。（這是我們前面提到的第三類市場。）例如，LedgerX 擁有一個使用互換合同將法定貨幣與“Next Day Bitcoin”進(jìn)行交易的SEF；它還提供了由 CFTC監(jiān)管的托管服務(wù)。（Gemini和Coinbase也提供托管服務(wù)。）SEFs的規(guī)模遠(yuǎn)不及諸如美國ICE期貨交易所等大型交易所，機(jī)構(gòu)客戶的基礎(chǔ)也小得多，但它們是日后的潛在競爭對手。

如果Bakkt獲得批準(zhǔn)，它將按照如下模式交易比特幣代幣。它將使用所謂的 “一天期貨”方式交易比特幣，這類合約結(jié)算的時間和在當(dāng)前現(xiàn)金市場上交易一樣多，也就是一天。經(jīng)紀(jì)人可以在交易日內(nèi)任何時候代表基金經(jīng)理客戶點擊標(biāo)價價格。閉市時，ICE清算所已經(jīng)安排好將買方的現(xiàn)金轉(zhuǎn)入賣方的銀行賬戶，同時比特幣代幣將被運往Bakkt數(shù)字倉庫。

無論是管理比特幣共同基金的機(jī)構(gòu)還是用比特幣進(jìn)行跨境付款的公司，都可以將比特幣委托給Bakkt。那這些客戶如何使用他們的比特幣支付？利用“私鑰” 。私鑰類似于數(shù)字簽名，是由數(shù)字和字母隨機(jī)生成的字符串。大多數(shù)比特幣所有者將其密鑰存儲在個人電腦或服務(wù)器上，或者存放在不受管制的交易市場賬戶中。這些設(shè)備很容易受到黑客攻擊，如果黑客竊取了密鑰，被盜的比特幣就歸黑客了。Autonomous Research的數(shù)據(jù)表明，網(wǎng)絡(luò)竊賊2011年來已經(jīng)竊取了價值超過16億美元的加密貨幣。

Bakkt計劃通過把私鑰“脫機(jī)”存儲在受到嚴(yán)格保護(hù)的數(shù)字倉庫中解決這個問題?；鸾?jīng)理或公司想從倉庫中取出比特幣時，Bakkt會確認(rèn)客戶身份并使用私鑰釋放比特幣。倉庫還將設(shè)置第二把鑰匙“公鑰”，用于打開收件人的賬戶接收比特幣。雙鑰匙的安全機(jī)制類似于銀行代表和客戶同時使用鑰匙才能打開保險柜。

全程在倉庫里實施的交易怎么操作？Bakkt 將連接到美國ICE期貨交易所，這樣客戶就可以無縫進(jìn)行比特幣與美元或歐元的交易。然后比特幣就自然而然地從賣方在ICE倉庫中的密碼箱轉(zhuǎn)移到買方的密碼箱，好像一輛叉車把金條從一個儲藏柜轉(zhuǎn)移到另一個儲藏柜。

為了使比特幣成為主流，Bakkt必須克服加密貨幣的主要缺點：速度極慢。比特幣運行在一個稱為區(qū)塊鏈的系統(tǒng)上，在一個由數(shù)以百萬計的個人成員組成的網(wǎng)絡(luò)上進(jìn)行操作，人們在網(wǎng)絡(luò)上競相進(jìn)行打包和交易驗證。事實上，每當(dāng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)中有比特幣所有者使用數(shù)字錢包購物時，這筆交易就會被 “廣播” 到網(wǎng)絡(luò)中的所有“節(jié)點”也就是計算機(jī)上。每一個節(jié)點爭相證明交易的合法性，因為贏家將獲得免費比特幣作為獎勵。問題在于無論你是花1.50美元買杯咖啡還是6萬美元買輛SUV，所有的交易都必須一筆一筆地廣播到所有節(jié)點。

因此現(xiàn)有系統(tǒng)每秒只能進(jìn)行大約七筆交易。這個相較于斯普雷徹和呂弗勒設(shè)想中的機(jī)構(gòu)規(guī)模，太慢了。

然而，Bakkt將轉(zhuǎn)換比特幣的體系結(jié)構(gòu)以實現(xiàn)高速運行。想象一下有幾十只共同基金、養(yǎng)老基金和捐贈基金在Bakkt倉庫均持有比特幣。如果資產(chǎn)經(jīng)理A從資產(chǎn)經(jīng)理B購買了2億美元的比特幣，那么比特幣代幣只需通過ICE交易所從B在Bakkt的賬戶移動到A在Bakkt的賬戶即可。儲存在Bakkt的比特幣總數(shù)沒有改變。假設(shè)每天都有數(shù)以百萬計的交易發(fā)生在Bakkt生態(tài)系統(tǒng)中，Bakkt只需簡單記錄比特幣借方和貸方?jīng)_抵的分類賬，不需要將每筆購買和銷售廣播到區(qū)塊鏈中。只有進(jìn)入或離開Bakkt倉庫的交易才需要廣播。

The reason why these trading platforms aren’t governed by either of the two federal watchdogs—the SEC or the CFTC—relates to how the two bodies classify cryptocurrencies. The SEC, which oversees stocks, bonds, and other securities, has said that the two biggest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ether, are not securities. The SEC is taking a wait-and-see approach to the others. So far, none of the current marketplaces have secured the SEC imprimatur as regulated securities exchanges for digital tokens.

While Bitcoin isn’t considered a security, it is deemed to be a commodity. It’s the job of the CFTC to regulate commodity futures and options on those futures—a vast portfolio comprising contracts for everything from crude oil to soybeans to gold. As it is a commodity, Bitcoin futures could only trade on a CFTC-regulated futures exchange, called a Designated Contract Market. (Similar to other currency trading marketplaces, a venue that simply exchanges dollars or Euros for Bitcoin on a “spot” basis do not need to be regulated by the CFTC.)

Today, the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Chicago Mercantile Exchange both trade futures contracts on Bitcoin. The contracts aren’t settled by delivering the actual coins. They’re settled in cash based on the movement of the price of Bitcoin. So in effect, they’re a vehicle for betting on the future price of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin’s designation as a commodity opens a rich opportunity for ICE: It now operates the two of the largest commodities futures exchanges on the planet—ICE Futures U.S., and ICE Futures Europe. For Sprecher and Loeffler, these venues provide exactly the type of protections needed to, as Loeffler puts it, “get the institutional engine running.”

It’s important to understand that the major exchanges regulated by the SEC or CFTC provide a broad package of three heavily-regulated services: trading, clearing, and either safe storage in the form of custody (for securities), or “warehouses” (for futures). On trades, the exchange ensures that the posted price the money manager clicks on is what they pay for a stock or futures contract. But the exchanges also set exacting rules for clearing and custody or warehousing. And those rules must be approved, and are overseen, by the SEC or CFTC

The federally-regulated exchanges require clearing services that effectively remove credit risk for both the buyer and seller. The clearing house guarantees that the seller will deliver the sugar, coffee, or gold as agreed under a futures contract, and that the buyer will make the full payment. If either fails to perform, it’s the clearing house––which is jointly funded by the trading firms that are members of the exchange and its owner, in this case ICE––that makes good on the delivery or the cash. As for safe storage, it comes in two flavors: custody for stocks and bonds, and warehousing for futures. SEC-regulated exchanges like the NYSE require that a mutual fund or pension fund hold their stock or bond certificates in super-safe accounts at such independent custody houses as State Street or BNY Mellon.

For futures, ICE and the other CFTC-regulated exchanges mandate that the coffee, gold, or silver that a party has agreed to purchase be stored in a licensed warehouse or other storage facility when the contract expires and the commodity is due for delivery. In effect, the buyer, whether a money manager like Vanguard or a user such as Cargill, can “pick up” the gold bars or bales of cotton at the warehouse. If the items aren’t there for pickup, or if the seller doesn’t pay, once again, it’s the clearing house that covers the losses.

Bakkt would provide the first fully-integrated package combining a major federally-regulated exchange, as well as with the clearing and storage overseen by the exchange. ICE owns six clearing houses that are vertically-integrated with ICE Futures U.S. and its other exchanges. By utilizing a CFTC regulated futures exchange for cryptocurrencies, Bakkt would provide two main layers of security that money managers regard as absolutely essential. The first is purchasing a security or commodity—in this case a digital token—through a regulated broker-dealer that’s a member of the ICE futures exchange.

The exchanges stipulate that depositors submit passports and articles of incorporation, and identify the source of funds used to purchase the assets. They also search for patterns of illegal activity. If one investor is, say, repeatedly losing money on oil trades to the same counter-party, those trades would raise a red flag, because the “l(fā)oser” could be laundering money and getting kickbacks from the buyer.

Only broker-dealers and futures commission merchants (FCMs) that are fully vetted by the regulated exchanges are allowed to trade on those venues as “members” of the ICE Futures U.S. On SEC and CFTC regulated exchanges, the exchange-approved members are trading with one another, on behalf of money managers that they, in turn, have fully vetted. Granted the same protections, investors could be absolutely sure they’re not buying Bitcoin from warlords who hacked a hedge fund to pilfer the tokens.

The second essential is furnishing regulated storage for digital currencies. “A qualified warehouse is the difference between institutional investors’ getting in or staying out,” says Loeffler.

Bakkt’s approach is furnishing what amounts to super-safe lockboxes resembling the vaults that hold gold bars for investors. The warehouses serving futures exchanges provide two main services. First, they ensure that assets can’t be stolen. In Bitcoin’s case, that would mean safeguarding the tokens in digital lock-boxes protected by multiple layers of cyber-security. Second, the policies and procedures followed by the exchanges verify the identities of the investors whose assets are held in the warehouses, guaranteeing that that the gold or oil stored for delivery wasn’t obtained illegally.

Bakkt plans to offer a full package combining a major CFTC-regulated exchange with CFTC-regulated clearing and custody, pending the approval from the commission and other regulators. Bakkt will provide access to a new Bitcoin trading platform on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange. And it will also offer full warehousing services, a business that ICE doesn’t have. “Bakkt’s revenue will come from two sources,” says Loeffler, “the trading fees on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange, and warehouse fees paid by the customers that buy Bitcoin and store with Bakkt.”

Bakkt will provide the biggest marketplace to date. But it won’t be the first or only CFTC-regulated platform trading Bitcoin tokens. The Dodd-Frank legislation created marketplaces called Swap Execution Facilities, or SEFs, that are overseen by the CFTC. (This is the third category of markets we mentioned earlier.) LedgerX, for example, owns a SEF that uses swap contracts to trade fiat currencies for Bitcoin called “Next Day Bitcoin”; it also provides custody services regulated by the CFTC. (Gemini and Coinbase also provide custody services.) The SEFs are far less established, and have far smaller base of institutional customers than the big exchanges such as ICE Futures U.S., but they are potential competitors in the years ahead.

Here’s how Bakkt’s exchange for trading Bitcoin tokens, if approved, would operate. It would trade Bitcoin using what are known as “one-day futures,” contracts that would take the same amount of time to settle as trades in the current cash market, meaning in a single day. The broker-dealer would click on a posted price at anytime during the trading day on behalf of a money manager client. By the market close, the ICE clearing house would have arranged to route the cash from the buyer’s to the seller’s bank account, and the Bitcoin tokens would be en route the to the Bakkt digital warehouse.

The clients entrusting their Bitcoin to Bakkt could be either institutions managing Bitcoin mutual funds, or companies making cross-border payments in Bitcoin. So how do those clients spend their Bitcoin? Control of “private keys” allow Bitcoin to be spent. Those keys are a randomly generated string of numbers and letters that resemble digital signatures. Most Bitcoin owners store their keys on PCs or servers, or in accounts at unregulated marketplaces. But private keys on those devices are vulnerable to hacking, and if the hacker steals the key, the hacker keeps the pilfered Bitcoin. Cyber-thieves have stolen more than $1.6 billion in cryptocurrencies by hacking investors’ accounts since 2011, according to Autonomous Research.

Bakkt would solve that problem by storing the private keys “offline” in its heavily-guarded digital warehouse. When a fund manager or company wants take Bitcoin out of the warehouse, Bakkt would confirm the client’s identity and release the Bitcoin using the private key. The warehouse will also hold a second key, called the public key, that opens the recipient’s account to receive Bitcoin. The double-key security resembles how it takes a bank rep and the customer, both with their own keys, to open a safety deposit box.

How about trades that occur all inside the warehouse? Bakkt would be connected to the ICE Futures U.S. exchange, so that customers could seamlessly trade Bitcoin for dollars or Euros. Then, the Bitcoin would simply shift from the seller’s lockbox in the ICE warehouse to the buyer’s lockbox, as if a forklift were transferring gold bars from one storage locker to another.

To make Bitcoin mainstream, Bakkt must overcome the cryptocurrency’s chief drawback: its extremely slow speed. Bitcoin runs on a system known as blockchain, operated by a network of millions of individual members who compete to package and verify transactions. Essentially, every time a Bitcoin owner on the network buys anything using his or her digital wallet, the transaction is “broadcast” to all the “nodes,” or computers in the network. The nodes battle to prove the transactions are legitimate, and the winner is rewarded with free Bitcoin. The rub is that since all transactions—from purchasing a $1.50 cup of coffee to a $60,000 SUV—must be individually broadcast to all the nodes.

As a result, the existing system can manage only around seven transactions per second. That’s much too slow to ever work on the institutional scale that Sprecher and Loeffler envision.

Bakkt, however, would transform Bitcoin’s architecture to run at high speed. Imagine that dozens of mutual funds, pension funds, and endowments hold Bitcoin in the Bakkt warehouse. If Asset Manager A buys $200 million in Bitcoin from Asset Manager B, the Bitcoin tokens simply move from B’s account at Bakkt to A’s account at Bakkt, via a trade on the ICE exchange. The total number of Bitcoins held at Bakkt doesn’t change. Let’s assume that millions of those transactions happen every day, all inside the Bakkt ecosystem. Bakkt simply keeps a ledger of those offsetting Bitcoin debit and credits. The individual purchases and sales don’t need to be broadcast to the blockchain. What does need to be broadcast are any payments coming into or exiting Bakkt’s warehouse.

因此，只要Bakkt能夠占有市場的大部分份額，它需要向區(qū)塊鏈報告的就只有一小部分交易，就能保證系統(tǒng)的高速運行。

呂弗勒解釋說：“我們的系統(tǒng)將運行在區(qū)塊鏈上方，除了區(qū)塊鏈，我們還會保留自己的賬目?！边@種設(shè)計不是首創(chuàng)。它類似于一種被稱為“閃電網(wǎng)絡(luò)”的技術(shù)，這種技術(shù)已經(jīng)在使用。在閃電網(wǎng)絡(luò)中，同樣的兩個參與者，比如家電制造商和零部件供應(yīng)商間發(fā)生了多起比特幣交易。只要當(dāng)事雙方使用固定數(shù)量的比特幣在二者之間購買、銷售并存儲，交易就不會被報告給區(qū)塊鏈，只在同一生態(tài)系統(tǒng)中來回進(jìn)行。

一旦華爾街的引擎轉(zhuǎn)了起來，比特幣就能獲得流動性，成為真正的貨幣。斯普雷徹和呂弗勒預(yù)測，屆時跨國公司將接受使用比特幣進(jìn)行國際支付。斯普雷徹說：“國際支付由銀行控制，這個體系的收費非常昂貴。”

例如，美國汽車零部件制造商從日本購買零部件時，它需要支付高額費用，將美元兌換成日元。這筆交易至少需要中間經(jīng)紀(jì)商促成，還涉及買方和賣方的銀行?？赡苄枰獌商鞎r間賣方才能收到日元，轉(zhuǎn)賬過程中美國制造商還要支付利息。相比之下，如果雙方使用比特幣付款，就可以繞過經(jīng)紀(jì)商和銀行，通過ICE交易所直接從買方在Bakkt的保險庫進(jìn)入到賣方在Bakkt的保險庫，從而節(jié)約大筆開支。

“比特幣將大大簡化全球貨幣的流動，”斯普雷徹說?！八锌赡艹蔀槭讉€世界貨幣。”

斯普雷徹已經(jīng)一次又一次地展現(xiàn)了自己用技術(shù)改造全球工業(yè)的愿景。ICE涉足數(shù)據(jù)領(lǐng)域足以證明斯普雷徹的敏銳。在2015年年末以52億美元收購 IDC之前, ICE在數(shù)據(jù)服務(wù)領(lǐng)域只是中等體量，而IDC是為機(jī)構(gòu)投資者提供債券定價的龍頭企業(yè)。

斯普雷徹的時機(jī)掌握得剛剛好：兩年內(nèi)，數(shù)據(jù)業(yè)務(wù)迅速增長，已經(jīng)躋身ICE收入最高的業(yè)務(wù)行列。數(shù)據(jù)業(yè)務(wù)主要有兩個渠道——交易定價和分析。ICE提供不同類型的交易定價服務(wù)并收取費用，既包括向經(jīng)紀(jì)公司和電視網(wǎng)絡(luò)提供 “證券買賣記錄帶（tape）”等常規(guī)產(chǎn)品，也包括向高頻交易者提供交易興旺市場的數(shù)據(jù)。ICE的大部分?jǐn)?shù)據(jù)通過一個叫ICE全球網(wǎng)絡(luò)的光纖和無線網(wǎng)格專有安全系統(tǒng)運行，該系統(tǒng)是紐交所在9/11 襲擊后建立的超級安全型骨干網(wǎng)絡(luò)。可以說，世界各地的主要基金經(jīng)理都接入了該網(wǎng)絡(luò)。

斯普雷徹做出了正確預(yù)測，基金經(jīng)理需要越來越多的數(shù)據(jù)來創(chuàng)建目標(biāo)明確的共同基金和ETF。ICE提供的是指標(biāo)性數(shù)據(jù)，可以在決定應(yīng)當(dāng)追加還是出手股票用作參考，例如日本小市值指數(shù)基金。ICE不管理資金。但除了向基金經(jīng)理出售數(shù)據(jù)外，它還購買了前美國銀行的指數(shù)集，并授權(quán)給投資經(jīng)理。ICE的美銀美林基金現(xiàn)在擁有1萬億美元的資產(chǎn)。

斯普雷徹的目標(biāo)是顛覆成本高昂的老式債券交易行業(yè)，目前行業(yè)里大多數(shù)業(yè)務(wù)仍然通過電話進(jìn)行。斯普雷徹收購 IDC時，公司每天對固定收益產(chǎn)品進(jìn)行一次定價?，F(xiàn)在ICE每天聯(lián)系不斷地追溯270萬債券和非流動性股票的實時報價。他希望通過讓僵化的債券領(lǐng)域徹底電子化來實現(xiàn)行業(yè)現(xiàn)代化，這是其中一步。為了推進(jìn)這個項目，ICE今年花了11億美元收購了兩個固定收益數(shù)字平臺——行業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者Virtu BondPoint和最大的市政債券電子交易網(wǎng)站TMC。

斯普雷徹既是工程師又是冒險家。他在威斯康星州的麥迪遜長大，父親是一名兼職賣保險的財務(wù)規(guī)劃師。他的妹妹吉爾·斯普雷徹說：“聽媽媽說，他六歲的時候就把一個吐司機(jī)拆散又重新裝回去。”吉爾和二妹凱倫制作獨立電影，成績斐然?！笆鶜q時，他在車庫里重新組裝了一臺豐田，還用這臺車換了一輛科邁羅?！?

斯普雷徹其實渴望成為職業(yè)賽車手，他還上了威斯康星州著名的美國之路（Road America）駕校?！榜R里奧·安德雷蒂說，最好的司機(jī)不是最勇敢的，而是最聰明的?！彼蛊绽讖卣f。“他錯了。我聰明但擔(dān)心生命安全。面對緊張情況時，我的腳會離開油門去踩剎車?！?

現(xiàn)在他更沉迷于車輛的本質(zhì)和細(xì)節(jié)，而不是賽車冒險。他躺在修車躺板上，拿著扳手，修理他的寶貝保時捷的排氣系統(tǒng)和搖桿面板。他收藏了十幾臺曾經(jīng)在勒芒參加賽車比賽的保時捷，這些已經(jīng)幾十歲的老爺車是他的傳家寶，他有時會借出去參加古董賽車。

20世紀(jì)90年代末，在斯普雷徹的加利福尼亞發(fā)電廠建成十幾年后，他想在現(xiàn)貨市場上出售過剩電力。那時幾乎所有的電力交易都通過電話進(jìn)行。斯普雷徹希望能讓多家機(jī)構(gòu)通過電子交易市場同時出價競買他們公司的電力。他只能找到一個這樣的交易市場，這是亞特蘭大一家電力公司旗下的平臺，雖然該平臺已經(jīng)簽下了63家公用事業(yè)公司，但業(yè)務(wù)量極小，每月?lián)p失100萬美元。1997年, 斯普雷徹用著名的1美元買下了這個平臺。（也可能是1000美元; 他說他想不起來了。）

交易所剛起步的前三年，日子不好過。“我們在eBay上出售舊的路由設(shè)備來籌上幾千美元?！盜CE主管技術(shù)的副主席查克·懷斯說。

如果不是2001年的曼哈頓之行扭轉(zhuǎn)了斯普雷徹的運勢，他就要把房子抵給銀行了。當(dāng)時，安然正在開拓能源交易，但在每筆交易中它都是買方或賣方。只有斯普雷徹能提供一個大型交易市場讓公共事業(yè)機(jī)構(gòu)間可以直接進(jìn)行交易。高盛和摩根士丹利在這次曼哈頓之行中告訴斯普雷徹，他們不想再讓安然一家獨大，因此借給他的交易所1500萬美元, 拯救了這家企業(yè)和斯普雷徹危在旦夕的住房。之后，斯普雷徹用了一個讓人震驚的策略，他把90%的股權(quán)基本上免費交給了13家銀行、能源公司和公用事業(yè)單位，換取他們承諾在他的交易市場上進(jìn)行保證數(shù)量的交易。2001年11月，安然倒閉了。第二個月，斯普雷徹的交易所的交易量飆升了180%。

與此同時，成長在伊利諾伊州農(nóng)場上的凱莉·呂弗勒在芝加哥短暫地做了一段時間的零售分析師，為得州的一家私募基金進(jìn)行交易。呂弗勒的新工作干了大概一年，她的老板、現(xiàn)任海軍部長理查德·斯賓塞宣布他要跳槽去亞特蘭大一家生意慘淡的電力交易所。呂弗勒研究了天然氣市場，認(rèn)為推廣電子交易的時機(jī)已經(jīng)成熟。所以她告訴斯賓塞想和他一起去。呂弗勒說：“我看到傳統(tǒng)天然氣交易像棟老房子一樣著火了，我想沖進(jìn)去滅火?！彼?002年加入ICE，當(dāng)時它的員工還不到100人。

大約就在同期，斯普雷徹在倫敦買下了國際石油交易所，這同樣是一間老式的公開喊價式交易市場，所里擠滿了大聲喊出指令的交易員。像往常一樣，交易員不認(rèn)可斯普雷徹想要電子化的舉措，所以斯普雷徹讓交易所下午關(guān)門，這樣客戶就別無選擇，這半天只能在他們的終端上交易。因此所有的活動都挪到了晚上。到了 2005年，IPE，即今天的歐洲ICE期貨交易所實現(xiàn)了完全電子化。兩年后ICE 收購了正在苦苦掙扎的紐約貿(mào)易委員會，開始了另外一次痛苦但利潤豐厚的變革，推動實現(xiàn)了電腦化。

2008年年末，斯普雷徹發(fā)現(xiàn)全球各大銀行都沒有出售價值萬億美元的信貸違約互換（CDS）的工具， CDS可以償還他們在金融危機(jī)中遭受的部分衍生產(chǎn)品損失。斯普雷徹為CDS建立了一家特別清算所，到2010年拍賣了價值50萬億美元的CDS，幫助解決了金融體系的一大難題。

然后，在 2013年，斯普雷徹完成了他迄今最大也最出名的收購，他以97.5億美元收購了紐約泛歐證交所。關(guān)于紐交所，我們一會再詳談。2015年ICE又收購了IDC，因此成為市場數(shù)據(jù)行業(yè)的主要參與者。ICE為什么一直在做這些大交易？斯普雷徹說： “我們就像一個不斷增加熱門節(jié)目的網(wǎng)絡(luò)?！?

斯普雷徹樂于告訴任何愿意聽他說的人，他有辦法解決他們的問題——而且不僅僅是生意上的問題。吉爾·斯普雷徹說：“他確實是一個無所不知的人。”呂弗勒回憶道，她在亞特蘭大交響樂團(tuán)董事會任職，一次和樂團(tuán)指揮羅伯特·斯帕諾吃飯時，斯普雷徹開始教這位大師推廣交響樂需要做什么。呂弗勒說，斯普雷徹一直在說：“你們需要走出大樓，走出殼子。你們需要在購物中心做快閃吸引年輕人！”“我覺得很尷尬，但杰夫就是這樣的?！眳胃ダ照f，“沒人能阻止他?！?

兩種明顯的傾向決定了他的管理風(fēng)格：憑著本能采用即興的方式聘用關(guān)鍵人物，能夠?qū)?chuàng)業(yè)精神和穩(wěn)定的表現(xiàn)完美結(jié)合并因此吸引了大眾股東?！拔覐膩頉]有后悔憑本能雇用的任何人?！彼f，“如果我是被他們的簡歷說服的，才可能會后悔?！?

下面這個故事非常斯普雷徹。斯普雷徹說，多年前在亞特蘭大公寓協(xié)會的一次亂糟糟的理事會上，與會人員因為一對夫婦爆發(fā)了一場爭吵，因為他們的兩條狗經(jīng)常在電梯里大便，主人卻不清理。 “然后有個家伙站起來，自愿要求做別人不想做的事?！彼蛊绽讖卣f，“他說：‘我來處理這個問題?！覍λ暮敛华q豫印象深刻?！彼蛊绽讖禺?dāng)時正在找一個能夠百求百應(yīng)的經(jīng)理來管理交易所的咨詢臺，那已經(jīng)被客戶投訴淹沒了。所以他雇了那個解決狗狗便溺問題的人——馬克·瓦瑟蘇格，他現(xiàn)在是ICE的首席運營官。

斯普雷徹相信自己的直覺在6月提拔史黛西·坎寧安為紐交所總裁，這是紐交所226年歷史中第一位女掌門?？矊幇驳暮啔v不是最華麗的。她在紐交所擔(dān)任過八年專業(yè)經(jīng)紀(jì)人，然后離職去攻讀烹飪學(xué)位。在納斯達(dá)克短暫任職后，又回到了紐交所，升任銷售管理主管。后來斯普雷徹選了她來理順一個歷史遺留的小業(yè)務(wù)，這個業(yè)務(wù)是為上市公司提供公司治理建議。

“那塊業(yè)務(wù)簡直是場噩夢?！彼f?！皢T工們總給舉報人熱線打電話，但又沒什么要舉報的。史黛西真的做到了，把它理順了，我們因此能把它賣掉?！彼蛊绽讖匾稽c也不懷疑坎寧安可以出色地經(jīng)營公司最重要的業(yè)務(wù)。

Hence, so long as Bakkt controls a big share of the market, it would need to report only a tiny sliver of transactions to the blockchain, enabling its system to operate at warp speed.

“Our system would operate on a layer above the blockchain, and we’d keep our own omnibus ledger apart from the blockchain,” explains Loeffler. The Bakkt design isn’t revolutionary. It closely resembles a technology called “the lightning network” that’s already in use. In the lightning network, the same two participants, say an appliance-maker and a parts supplier, engage in multiple Bitcoin transactions. As long as the parties are using a fixed number of Bitcoins to buy, sell from one another, and store for that purpose, the transactions aren’t reported to the blockchain, and zap back and forth within the same ecosystem.

Once Wall Street gets the flywheel whirring, Bitcoin would gain the liquidity to become a bona fide currency. Sprecher and Loeffler predict that multinationals would then adopt Bitcoin for international payments. “The banks control international payments, and the system is very expensive,” notes Sprecher.

When an U.S. auto parts manufacturer buys components from Japan, for example, it can pay stiff fees to convert dollars to yen. The purchase, at a minimum, involves a broker-dealer that makes the trade, and the purchaser’s and the seller’s banks. It might take two days before the seller can collect the yen, costing the U.S. producer interest while the funds are in transit. By contrast, if both parties use Bitcoin the payments could bypass the brokers and banks, flowing via the ICE exchange from the buyer’s to the seller’s vault held at Bakkt, and reaping big savings.

”Bitcoin would greatly simplify the movement of global money,” says Sprecher. “It has the potential to become the first worldwide currency.”

Sprecher has demonstrated time and again the vision to transform global industries with technology. ICE’s foray into data, for example, is a testament to Sprecher’s agility. The company was a medium-sized player in data services until late 2015, when it purchased IDC, the leading provider of bond prices for institutional investors, for $5.2 billion.

Sprecher’s timing was spot on: In two years, data has mushroomed into ICE’s biggest revenue category. The business splits into two main channels—exchange pricing, and analytics. For the former, ICE collects fees for dispensing different types of pricing from its exchanges, from such routine products as furnishing the “tape” to brokerage houses and TV networks to providing deep market data to high frequency traders. Most of ICE’s data runs through a secure, proprietary system of fiber and wireless grids called the ICE Global Network, built as a super-secure backbone by the NYSE following the 9/11 attacks. The IGN is connected to virtually every major money manager around the globe.

Sprecher correctly predicted that money managers would need more and more data to create sharply-targeted mutual funds and ETFs. ICE supplies the data signaling when stocks should be added or dropped from, for example, a Japanese small cap value index fund. ICE doesn’t manage money. But besides selling data to fund managers, it purchased the former Bank of America family of indexes, and licenses them to investment managers. The ICE BofAML funds now boast $1 trillion in assets.

Not surprisingly, Sprecher is aiming to disrupt the costly, old-fashioned bond trading universe, where most business is still conducted over the phone. When Sprecher bought IDC, the firm priced fixed income products once a day. Now, ICE sources real-time quotes on 2.7 million bonds and illiquid equities around the clock. That effort is part of his campaign to modernize bond trading by making the hidebound field fully electronic. To advance the project, ICE this year spent a total of $1.1 billion to purchase two digital fixed income platforms—Virtu BondPoint, a leader in corporates, and TMC, the largest electronic trading site for municipal bonds.

Sprecher is a blend of an engineer and an adventurer. He grew up in Madison, Wisc., the son of a financial planner who sold insurance on the side. “Our mother says that when he was six years old, he took apart a toaster and put it back together,” says his sister Jill Sprecher, who with a second sister, Karen, forged a distinguished record making independent films. “Then at sixteen he rebuilt a Toyota in the garage and traded it for an ‘hugger orange’ Camaro.”

Sprecher, in fact, longed to be a professional race car driver, attending the famous Road America driving school in Wisconsin. “Mario Andretti said the best drivers aren’t the bravest, but the smartest,” says Sprecher. “He was wrong. I was smart, but feared for my life. In tense situations, I took my foot off the gas, and hit the brake.”

He now indulges more in the nitty-gritty than the romance racing by lying on a mechanic’s creeper, wrench in hand, to repair exhaust systems and rocker panels on his collection of a dozen decades-old Porsches that competed at Le Mans, heirlooms that he loans out for vintage rallies.

Following a dozen years building power plants in California, Sprecher in the late 1990s sought a way to sell his surplus electricity on a spot market. In those days, almost all electricity trading happened over the phone. Sprecher wanted to get multiple utilities bidding for his power on an electronic marketplace. He could only find one, a platform owned by an Atlanta power company that had signed 63 utilities to its exchange, but was doing minimal business––and losing $1 million a month. In 1997, Sprecher bought it for that famous $1 sum. (Or it might have been $1,000; he says he can’t recall anymore.)

The fledgling exchange stumbled for three years. “We were selling old routing equipment on eBay to raise a few thousand dollars,” says Chuck Vice, now ICE’s vice-chairman in charge of technology.

Sprecher was about to lose his house to the bank when a trip to Manhattan in 2001 brought a reversal of fortune. At the time, Enron was pioneering energy trading, but it was the buyer or seller in every transaction. Only Sprecher was offering a major marketplace where utilities could trade directly with one another. On that trip to Manhattan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley told Sprecher they were wary of Enron’s dominance, and loaned $15 million to his exchange, saving the enterprise and Sprecher’s endangered residence. Then, in an astounding gambit, Sprecher handed 90% of his equity, basically for free, to thirteen banks, energy companies, and utilities, in exchange for their commitment to conduct a guaranteed volume of trades on his marketplace. In November of 2001, Enron collapsed. The next month, the volumes on Sprecher’s exchange soared 180%.

Meanwhile, Kelly Loeffler––who grew up weeding soybean fields on her parents’ farm in Illinois––had traded a stint as a retail analyst in Chicago for a private equity position in Texas. Loeffler had spent about a year at the new job when her boss, the current Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer, announced that he was joining a struggling power exchange in Atlanta. Loeffler had studied the natural gas market, and was convinced the time was ripe for electronic trading. So she told Spencer she wanted to go with him. “I see a house that’s burning down like old fashioned trading in natural gas, and I want to run in and fix it,” says Loeffler. She joined ICE in 2002 when it still had fewer than 100 employees.

Around that time, Sprecher bought the International Petroleum Exchange in London, once again, an antiquated open-outcry marketplace choked with floor traders shouting orders. As usual, the traders fought his campaign to go electronic, so Sprecher closed the exchange in the afternoons so that clients had no choice but to trade on their terminals half the day. All the action shifted to the evening hours, and by 2005, the IPE, now ICE Futures Europe, went fully electronic. Two years later, ICE bought the floundering New York Board of Trade, and engineered another painful but highly profitable transition to computerized trading.

Late in 2008, Sprecher noted that the world’s big banks had no vehicle for selling the trillions of dollars in credit default swaps that would repay part of their losses on derivatives suffered in the financial crisis. Sprecher established a special clearing house for CDS that by 2010 auctioned off an astounding $50 trillion in CDS, helping to surmount a towering hazard to the financial system.

Then, in 2013, Sprecher made his biggest and most prestigious acquisition to date by purchasing NYSE Euronext for $9.75 billion—more on the NYSE shortly––and in 2015, grabbed IDC in the deal that made ICE a major player in market data. Why does ICE keep making these big deals? “We’re like a network that keeps adding hit shows,” says Sprecher.

Sprecher isn’t shy about telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s got the solution to their problem—and not just in business. “He’s a know-it-all who really knows it all,” says Jill Sprecher. Loeffler recalls that at a dinner with Robert Spano, conductor of the Atlanta Symphony, where Loeffler serves on the board, Sprecher began lecturing the maestro on what was really needed to promote the symphony. According to Loeffler, Sprecher kept saying, “You need to get out of the building, get out of this shell. You need to do pop-ups at the mall to appeal to young people!” “I was mortified, but that’s Jeff,” says Loeffler. “There was no stopping him.”

Two distinct currents distinguish his management style: His instinctive, improvisational approach to hiring key people, and his ability marry entrepreneurship with a steady performance that appeals to public shareholders. “I’ve never regretted hiring anyone when I followed my instincts,” he says. “Only when I was swayed by their resume instead.”

In one of his signature stories, Sprecher relates that at a raucous board meeting for his condo association in Atlanta years ago, an argument erupted about a couple whose two dogs were regularly pooping in the elevator, sans cleanup by their owners. “Then this guy gets up and volunteers for what nobody else wanted to do,” says Sprecher. “He says, ‘I’ll take care of the pooping dogs problem.’ I was really impressed that he jumped right in.” Sprecher was looking for a can-do manager to run the exchange’s help desk, which was overwhelmed by customer complaints. So he hired the guy who tackled the canine problem—Mark Wassersug, who is now ICE’s chief operating officer.

Sprecher also trusted his gut in promoting Stacey Cunningham in June to be president of the NYSE—the first woman to head the exchange in its 226-year history. Cunningham didn’t have the fanciest of resumes. She’d served for eight years as a specialist broker at the Big Board, then left to pursue a culinary degree. After a stint at NASDAQ, she returned to the Big Board, rising to lead sales management. Sprecher then chose her to straighten out a small legacy NYSE business that provided listed companies advice on corporate governance.

“It was a nightmare,” he says. “The employees were always calling the whistleblower hotline with nothing to complain about. Stacey really straightened it out, and we were able to sell it.” Sprecher had no doubt that Cunningham could perform brilliantly running his trophy business.

斯普雷徹的第二大標(biāo)志性才能是在投資顛覆性想法和保持收入持續(xù)增長之間巧妙保持平衡。ICE的首席獨立董事、Verizon前高管弗雷德·薩樂諾對斯普雷徹能成功從培育初創(chuàng)公司的角色調(diào)整為大型上市企業(yè)的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人贊嘆不已?！按蠖鄶?shù)創(chuàng)業(yè)家都認(rèn)識不到，重要的不僅僅是下一個想法?！彼f，“如果讓他們經(jīng)營上市公司，他們會覺得因為剛剛進(jìn)行了大額投資或收購導(dǎo)致利潤下降了3到4個點是沒有問題的?！?

在薩樂諾看來，投資者固然注重遠(yuǎn)景，但他們也希望看到利潤平穩(wěn)上升。“杰夫明白，做了交易后要把不必要的費用從業(yè)務(wù)中剝離，通過節(jié)約花銷為未來的項目籌集資金。他信仰的文化不是‘我們承諾在未來給你回報?！悻F(xiàn)在就要做出業(yè)績。杰夫明白這一點，但大多數(shù)創(chuàng)業(yè)者都不知道?！?

斯普雷徹正是采用這一策略大幅削減了紐交所臃腫的花銷，讓紐交所重新煥發(fā)了活力，同時還能把節(jié)余用于重建這一世界上最偉大的品牌。2013年ICE 收購紐交所時，斯普雷徹通過將歐洲交易所作為泛歐交易所拆分，迅速籌集了約20億美元。即便如此，紐交所仍然擁有3000多名員工和約1000名顧問。它有六個不同的技術(shù)平臺來運營其三大交易所——紐交所、Arca和美國交易所。它持續(xù)在把頂尖的技術(shù)股和硅谷寵兒的股票拱手讓給納斯達(dá)克。它的傳奇建筑、具有象征意義的標(biāo)志性雕塑破敗不堪。曾經(jīng)十分華麗的巴洛克式董事會房間里，油漆已經(jīng)剝落，他們沒有把六樓七樓的豪華會議室開放給上市公司舉辦光鮮的活動，而是把這些空間都變成了一個個擁擠的小辦公室。

許多華爾街傳統(tǒng)主義者擔(dān)心，斯普雷徹推行的全面電子化會磨滅紐交所的吸引力。但他反其道而行之，讓這一地標(biāo)重現(xiàn)昔日輝煌，甚至還增強(qiáng)了交易大廳的傳奇色彩。他通過提升業(yè)務(wù)效率獲得了重塑輝煌的經(jīng)費。有一群聰明人在安靜的21樓創(chuàng)造了一個名為Pillar的單一技術(shù)平臺，取代了原來各種不同交易系統(tǒng)的混亂拼接，從而將員工數(shù)量降低到900人。

斯普雷徹不再追逐小規(guī)模IPO，專注于釣大魚，因為新上市公司支付的費用是基于新股發(fā)行的數(shù)量。紐交所實現(xiàn)IPO38連勝，籌集了超過7億美元。令人驚訝的是，作為電子交易的倡導(dǎo)者，斯普雷徹能夠認(rèn)識到，紐交所品牌的一個關(guān)鍵部分是那些專業(yè)交易者，他們給紐交所帶來了豐富的色彩。 “電子交易有些過頭了。”他說。“專業(yè)交易者能夠用自己的資本，消除價格峰值和低谷的波動。”

很顯然，穿藍(lán)色工作服的人是象征美國資本市場的視覺符號?！坝?50個地方可以交易股票，”斯普雷徹說，“其中249家是雷同的。你想擁有哪一家？這就是為什么我們要把紐交所做成獨一無二?！?

為了恢復(fù)紐交所褪色的神秘感，斯普雷徹清理了迷宮似的辦公室，把員工搬到樓上的格子間。斯普雷徹在六七層中間安裝了一個大氣的背光大理石樓梯。樓層經(jīng)過翻新，有三個巨型招待廳和十五個稍小一些的會議室。斯普雷徹說：“我的想法是把紐約證交所變成《財富》美國500強(qiáng)企業(yè)的會所?！彼龅搅恕Ｅe個例子，6月初的兩天時間里就有十來家公司在紐約證交所舉行了活動。

零售支付業(yè)似乎在斯普雷徹式的顛覆行為中逐漸成熟。如今，美國人每年要為購買商品和服務(wù)支付7萬億美元的信用卡、借記卡手續(xù)費和貝寶等數(shù)字門戶網(wǎng)站交易費，約占國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值的60%。接受這些卡片的商店和餐館通常要向大約六個中間人支付2%到3%的費用，包括和商戶簽約的“商戶承購者”、信用卡巨擘Visa和萬事達(dá)卡以及發(fā)行卡片的銀行等。

毫不夸張地說，轉(zhuǎn)而使用比特幣會大幅削減這些高昂的費用。消費者可以直接用手機(jī)或個人電腦上的比特幣錢包購買雜貨或洗滌劑，只需要在沃爾瑪或星巴克的掃描儀上掃一掃即可，沒有銀行收取中間費用。如果比特幣成為零售業(yè)的主要貨幣，信用卡可能會消失。

那么ICE和Bakkt會與ICE的主要客戶大銀行形成競爭關(guān)系嗎？不一定。盡管收費很高， 銀行很少能通過該業(yè)務(wù)盈利，因為這些費用要用于提供諸如欺詐監(jiān)測、呼叫中心等服務(wù)，還要像常旅客計劃或租車旅程累計折扣那樣為客戶提供折扣。銀行賺大錢的地方是信用卡消費的利息。改變購買方式不會改變?nèi)藗兘桢X的數(shù)額，只是改變了他們把錢放在哪的問題。

支付行業(yè)專家的數(shù)據(jù)表明，銀行可能會和Bakkt合作，因為這一新系統(tǒng)有利于促進(jìn)不同形式的借貸。例如，如果客戶的比特幣購買申請因余額太低遭到了拒絕，他可以立即去銀行柜臺借錢彌補(bǔ)差額。

在交易室進(jìn)行采訪時，可以看到墻上掛滿了鑲了相框的債券證書，記載著修建大鐵路和基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施時的融資歷史，正是這些歷史成就了美國。斯普雷徹拿紐交所和比特幣做了個比較，一個是1972成立于梧桐樹下的大名鼎鼎的交易所，一個是能改變消費者和公司購買方式的新技術(shù)?！氨忍貛艣]辦法憑借流氓式的想法存活，”他說?！盀榱税l(fā)展進(jìn)化，加密貨幣需要在已經(jīng)建立的基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施上運行。它們需要利用現(xiàn)有金融體系沉淀多年的信任和規(guī)則。它們需要擁有體現(xiàn)在紐交所身上的那種信任感?！?

斯普雷徹修復(fù)了金融市場上最偉大的地標(biāo)。我們很快就會看到，他能否給他認(rèn)為能改變世界的數(shù)字貨幣也帶來榮耀。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

譯者：Agatha

Sprecher’s second trademark talent is keeping an artful balance between investing in breakthrough ideas, and producing consistent growth in earnings. Fred Salerno, ICE’s lead independent director and a former top executive at Verizon, marvels at how Sprecher adjusted from nurturing a startup to guiding a huge public company. “Most entrepreneurs don’t recognize that it’s not just all about the next idea,” says Salerno. “Once they’re running a public company, they see no problem with taking margins down 3 or 4 points because they just made a big investment or acquisition.”

In Salerno’s view, investors take a long-term outlook, but they also want to see a smooth ascent in profits. “Jeff understood that as soon as you do a deal, you need to mine unnecessary expenses out of the business, so you can generate the savings to fund future projects. His culture isn’t, ‘We’ll just promise something in the future.’ You need to deliver performance at the same time. Jeff understands that, and most entrepreneurs don’t.”

Sprecher revitalized the Big Board by deploying just that strategy––radically paring bloated costs and channeling the savings into rebuilding one of the world’s great brands. When ICE bought the NYSE in 2013, Sprecher quickly raised roughly $2 billion by spinning off its European exchanges as Euronext. Even so, the NYSE still had over 3,000 employees and around 1,000 consultants. It was running six divergent tech platforms to operate its three major exchanges—NYSE, Arca, and American. It consistently lost trophy tech listings to the Nasdaq, then the darling of Silicon Valley. Its legendary building, the symbol of its iconic stature, was a wreck. The paint on its once grand, baroque Board Room was peeling, and the instead of opening what were once impressive meeting rooms on its sixth and seventh floors to its listed companies for fancy events, the NYSE had transformed those spaces into warrens of tiny offices.

Many Wall Street traditionalists fretted that Sprecher would kill the Big Board’s allure by going all-electronic. But he did just the opposite, restoring the landmark at Wall and Broad Streets to its former splendor, and enhancing the legendary buzz on the trading floor. He found the money by radically improving the Big Board’s efficiency. A bunch of brainiacs sequestered on the 21st floor created a single tech platform called Pillar that replaced the crazy-quilt of trading systems, a coup that helped lower the headcount to 900.

Sprecher stopped chasing small IPOs, and concentrated on the big fish, since newly-listed companies pay fees based on the number of shares outstanding. The NYSE established a streak of winning 38 straight IPOs that raised over $700 million. Surprising for an apostle of electronic trading, Sprecher recognized that a crucial part of the brand was the specialist traders who brought so much color to the Big Board’s floor. “Electronic trading went too far,” he remarks. “The specialists perform a service by smoothing out the spikes and valleys in prices by using their own capital.”

But it’s also clear that the folks in the blue smocks are a visual symbol of the U.S. capital markets. “There are 250 places to trade equities,” says Sprecher. “Of those, 249 are the same. Which one would you want to own? That’s why we want the NYSE to be one of a kind.”

To restore its fading mystique, Sprecher cleared out the maze of offices and moved the employees to cubicles on the upper floors. Sprecher installed a spectacular staircase composed of backlit marble slabs to join the sixth and seventh floors. Those refurbished floors now house three giant reception halls and fifteen smaller conference rooms. “The idea was to turn the NYSE into a clubhouse for the Fortune 500,” says Sprecher. It’s happened. On one two-day stretch in early June, for example, no fewer than 10 companies held events at the NYSE.

Retail payments is an industry that appears ripe for Sprecher-style disruption. Today, Americans charge $7 trillion in goods and services every year—around 60% of GDP—on credit and debit cards, and through digital portals such as PayPal. The stores and restaurants that accept those cards typically pay 2% to 3% to around six intermediaries, including “merchant acquirers” who sign up the merchants, credit card giants such as Visa and MasterCard, and the banks that issue the cards.

It’s hard to overstate how drastically a shift to Bitcoin could crunch those lofty fees. Consumers could pay for groceries or detergent directly from the Bitcoin wallets on their iPhones or PCs, right from a scanner at Walmart or Starbucks, with no banks taking fees in the middle. If Bitcoin became the chief currency for retail, it’s likely that credit cards would disappear.

So would ICE and Bakkt be antagonizing ICE’s main customers, the major banks? Not necessarily. Despite the large fees, banks typically make little money processing purchases, since they mainly return those fees to provide services such as fraud monitoring, call centers, and providing rebates that go to such rewards as frequent flyer miles and rental car discounts. Where the banks make big money is on the interest charged on balances on credit cards. Changing the purchasing system wouldn’t alter the amounts that folks borrow, just where they hold those balances.

According to payment industry experts, the banks might cooperate with Bakkt, because the new system could actually encourage different forms of borrowing. For example, a customer whose Bitcoin purchase is declined because of a low balance could get an immediate loan from his or her bank, right at the checkout counter, to cover the shortfall.

At the interview in the Bond Room, featuring walls festooned with framed bond certificates chronicling the great railroad and infrastructure financings that built America, Sprecher drew a parallel between the exchange famously born in 1792 under the buttonwood tree and the technology that could transform the way consumers and companies buy just about everything. “Bitcoin can’t survive as a rogue idea,” he says. “To evolve, the cryptocurrencies need to run on established infrastructure. They need the trust and rules that have been built into our financial system for many years. They need the kind of trust that the Big Board represents.”

Sprecher restored what may be the greatest icon in financial markets. We’ll soon see if he can bring respectability to the token that he thinks can change the world.