Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux (Bitstamp): How Cryptocurrencies Can Better Meet Clients’ Evolving Needs
“The key to successful and continued investment in the global cryptocurrency market lies in education, transparency, and security,” states Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux, CEO of Bitstamp Europe. He explains how Bitstamp tries to adapt its services to customers’ needs and expectations. Interview.
Can you describe Bitstamp in a few words?
Bitstamp represents the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, supporting investors, traders and leading financial institutions since 2011. In fact, more than 500 employees work in the following five offices: Ljubljana, Luxembourg, New York, Singapore and Amsterdam. This number should reach 700 by the end of the year, which testifies to Bitstamp’s accelerating growth. In addition, over four million customers worldwide trust Bitstamp’s secure and reliable trading venue. Indeed, the company provides a proven track record, cutting-edge market infrastructure and demonstrates dedication to personal service. Furthermore, Bitstamp combines crypto and finance through its intuitive web platform and mobile app or industry-leading APIs.
“Cryptocurrencies have become crucial to every investor’s portfolio, especially with more banks offering crypto services”
How are your clients’ needs evolving?
Cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly mainstream, and that means growing numbers of investors. We also see rising use of our mobile app versus the web interface. As a matter of fact, our clients show interest in digital assets beyond BTC and ETH. Therefore, we have added 50 of them after an internal review. Users also want to earn an additional passive income from their holdings. In this case, we provide Bitstamp Earn for users to earn staking rewards for ETH and ALGO. Finally, we plan to add more assets in the future. Effectively, the key to successful and continued investment in the global cryptocurrency market lies in education, transparency and security for all investors so that they can trade with confidence. This will ensure that assets and services in the crypto space are provided in the best interests of customers and address the concerns of key players.
What trends do you identify in the trading of cryptocurrencies?
First, we observe strong institutional adoption ranging from banks, prop trading firms, hedge funds to FinTech’s offering crypto to their clients via Bitstamp. Cryptocurrencies have become crucial to every investor’s portfolio, especially with more banks offering crypto services. Moreover, several governments are now looking to introduce regulations to protect customers and provide a proper framework for digital money. Secondly, the retail customer base also continues to diversify, from people investing hundreds of euros monthly to early adopters with large balances. Lastly, Bitcoin remains the most traded asset, but its dominance tends to erode as new entrants seek higher returns in smaller market cap assets.