While Bakkt’s ties to ICE should in theory have provided a strategic advantage, those ties may have also weighed the company down with politics and bureaucracy. While White may have been seen a natural choice to lead the venture, Bakkt instead chose Kelly Loeffler—the wife of ICE’s billionaire CEO Jeffrey Sprecher—as its first CEO.

In early 2020, Loeffler left Bakkt when she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, taking a $9 million payout on her way out. Loeffler lost the seat to a Democrat in the November 2020 election after attempting to reinvent herself as a Trumpist firebrand.