“We are huge fans of stablecoins”

The Cryptonomist interviewed Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, the deputy CEO of the famous crypto exchange, Bitpanda.

Can you comment further about l your partnership with the Societe Generale in France? 

I think the important part or thing when we look currently at the crypto landscape and digital asset landscape across Europe is that banks are suddenly moving into that space. Why?

Because of MICA, the upcoming regulatory framework for European crypto companies, but also banks when it comes to crypto assets, gives clarity and clear guidance for banks and other financial institutions on how to deal with crypto and digital assets in general. 

Therefore and I think that was the essence also with regarding the partnership between Bitpanda and also Societe Generale, SG Forged, their digital asset subsidiary, that, such a large banking group from France now moving into that space, already being with the subsidiary there for a couple of years, but now being quite active in that. And we, as with BitPanda, are partnering always with the market leaders in each of our markets, and we did that in Germany with Deutsche Bank, for example. And now we do it with the subscription of our, and its subsidiary, SG Forge. And, you’re also doing the opposite.

You are also offering stocks and commodities now. So how do you see this diversification impacting your user base and your growth strategy? And, also, what’s the difference between BitPanda and the other platforms who offer stock and commodities? 

Sure. I think, one thing to be clear is that we are not the stock broker or a classic and traditional equities brokerage company.

What we are is a crypto native, crypto platform. However, what we’ve seen and learned out of the asset class of crypto is that retail investors value 3 characteristics very much which crypto can offer them. 1st, it’s fractionalization. You can already buy a fraction starting with 1 euro of Bitcoin, for example. The second is the transferability.

You can transfer that fraction of a Bitcoin across the world anytime. And the third one is tradability, meaning availability. So 24/7 and not Monday to Friday from 9 to 5. So for us, when we were looking into what other asset classes would be interesting for end customers to get the same characteristics in, we thought, okay. We pilot that and hook it as assets out of the traditional world.

For example, equities or ETFs, to exactly make it also tradable fractional and 24/7 to our end customers. And this is actually what we offer on our platform because we believe we are a full digital assets platform where you can have cryptos and asset classes, tokenized assets, and also traditional asset classes in a modern way. 

You mentioned Mica before. What are the other challenges and opportunities you’ve seen since this new regulation?

I think Mica is a first step. It’s not the end game, and it’s a start of regulatory clarity across Europe when it comes to regulation for crypto and digital assets within the financial service industry. But there are 2 dimensions. 1 is global. I believe we will see similar regulatory frameworks across other markets and countries.

For example, in the UAE, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they will introduce the similar framework based on the European one already, and we’ll see those in other areas. The other one is in Europe. It’s a first step, and there will be, for sure, iterations and additional regulatory requirements along the way based on the Mica framework. So I think it’s a good starting point. It’s the first time that regulatory clarity drives innovation for the European market, and in that case, for blockchain technology.

Nevertheless, we will definitely still see a lot of movement over the next couple of years. 

Can you share any insight of the security protocols you use to safeguard your user assets? 

I think the most important one is that we’re huge believers of, to store assets fully called. It’s industry standard. We have been doing that for more than 10 years.

So the topic of safety is very, very important for us. We work together with all different types of companies and auditors, our own, auditor, also auditing our funds and our storage on a regular basis. We have several security procedures, and we, for sure, stick to market standards in that regard. 

I think you can understand that due to confidentiality reasons, sharing more than that is not possible. Nevertheless, I think the main point is we are the most regulated European platform across Europe.

When it comes to crypto, we’re licensed in Germany. We’re licensed by the FMA in Austria, and we also get audited from them on a regular basis. So I think that gives our customers a very high degree of trust when it comes to being dependent. 

What do you think about this trend we can say about real world assets and the fact that a lot of platforms are trying to launch their own stable coins? 

So from a stablecoin perspective, I think stablecoins in general are very, very, important, for the whole industry. Why? Because in the end, it’s a digital way of fiat money, which can be used to have instant settlement, for example, or interact onchain. So we have seen it already with USDC and other, US dollar pay backed, stablecoins, and now seals with the relevant euro ones, euro c, euro c b, and others, that, euro pegged stablecoins are on the rise, and especially for on chain activity are super important. Yeah. And we are not just, followers of that.

We’re big fans, and that’s also the reason why we partnered up with a couple of these to make them accessible for our customers. 

With the rise of DeFi and non custodial solutions, how does Bitpanda want to position itself within this broader crypto ecosystem? 

For us, it’s clear. We are Europe Europe’s market leader when it comes to crypto, as being not just 10 years there, but also being the largest and most regulated European crypto platform. We are market leader in our home markets with our own retail business in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other markets around it, with our big benefits com dot com platform.

However, we also believe in partnerships. This that’s why we partner up with the leading banks across Europe, like Societe Generale, like Deutsche Bank, like others in other markets, to bring crypto to their end customers.

Are there new products or services that you guys can expect from Bitpanda in the near future. How do you stay competitive? 

We believe that also other asset classes out of the traditional world are moving on chain, and, therefore, handling them, interacting with them, will be crucial. 

And for us, it’s always about regulatory clarity, safety, trust for our end customers, and the highest degree of convenience. So for us, it’s really about how we can enable our customers to interact on chain as easily as possible. 

And this is how we did so far with our platform and our technology, and this is also where we really missed lots to develop it further for the future. And, for sure, it’s another trend of the latest period.

What is your opinion about the AI and the interaction it can have with crypto trading, for example? 

I think AI is something which really will completely change our society and how we interact across it. Nevertheless, we’re not there yet. I think the next couple of years will be super, super interesting and promising, but also very hard for a lot of people to really cope with the trend. Nevertheless, in the financial service industry, and especially when it comes to the crypto industry, there are too many main use cases as of today for AI.

One is internally process automation efficiency. The other one is customer interaction to just enable customers to have a real conversation, text based, to somehow get more information, get data, get insights, get research on the journey on to decide what they should buy and when. 

And last but not least, a question that I have to ask you that I always ask to everyone we interview: what’s your forecast about Bitcoin price in the next decade? 

Where the price will go, we will see. I’m a huge believer that the adoption of blockchain technology is not just a trend, but it’s definitely happening. 

And you see that, for example, with regulation, which suddenly is based on that, with use cases of large corporations, with some of the entertainment companies around the globe and gaming companies moving into the space of Web3. 

So, therefore, the whole technology will get more adopted, and, therefore, also crypto and crypto assets based on the technology will also benefit very, very much for that. So I look into a very bright future for crypto and digital assets in general, and this, I’m pretty sure, will also be reflected in the prices. But we’ll see.

Here the full video interview with the deputy CEO of Bitpanda: