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Term Sheet — Monday, October 15
Good morning, Term Sheet readers. My colleague Shawn Tully confirmed that Coinbase veteran Adam White is joining the newly-launched cryptocurrency venture Bakkt as its chief operating officer. White was part of the so-called “Coinbase Mafia” — he joined the startup as the fifth employee and helped build it up into a crypto-colossus with 25 million customers. For the last 18 months, White was the chief of its institutional products and regulatory arm. “In 2017, I saw a big shift,” he told Fortune. “The interest in Bitcoin and other currencies started changing from retail to the institutional side. But the level of infrastructure of the existing trading sites often didn’t meet their expectations. That’s why they’re waiting on the sidelines.” The big banks, he says, needed exchanges that provided the safety they required for trading equities, bonds or gold. “That’s why I joined Bakkt,” says White. Bakkt has deep ties to Wall Street’s institutional investing titans and it’s pitching…