Business2community.com caught up with Bitstamp CEO Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux while he was holidaying in the south of France, so we were especially pleased that he could take the time out to talk to us.
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Bitstamp is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, and most reputable of exchanges in the crypto space, having been founded in 2011. Indeed, Monday 22 August was the firm’s 11th birthday.
So what better time for Bitstamp to launch a marketing drive aimed at retail investors and the Q2 update of its Crypto Pulse Survey 2022, which will be released in full at the end of the month.
We kicked off our discussion by asking JB, as his colleagues often call him, about the survey’s findings and the marketing push, before we dived into a wide-ranging discussion of other crypto matters.
The full interview covered everything from stablecoins to regulation, the interest the firm earns on its substantial cash pile and, among many other things, including whether Bitstamp will be launching an NFT marketplace anytime soon and how to get a coin listed on the famously selective spot exchange – and much more besides.
Below we reproduce some excerpts from the interview with Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux
Preview of data findings of the Bitstamp Crypto Pulse Survey Q2 2022
What is very interesting from the survey is that the confidence level is still there from our last survey in Q1 across the UK market.
In terms of crypto being a trustworthy investment we had a figure of 52% in 2021 – that has fallen to around 42% in 2022. That’s a slight decrease but it’s not dramatic.
Significantly, we continue to see a lack of knowledge and education as one of the main barriers among retail to investing in crypto – the proportion citing a lack of crypto education has increased from 45% in 2021 to 55% this year. Which means as an ecosystem we need to be amplifying on education.
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On these three points – trust, education and risk – the data is pretty consistent across regions.
On Bitstamp’s new features announced in its Summer of Discovery
Yes, we are making it easier for retail clients to buy crypto on Bitstamp, so they are now able to buy crypto with Apple Pay or Google Pay for instance.
We are also launching new assets on the platform at the end of August.
And we are really excited to be introducing 0% trading fees when clients trade up $1,000 in a 30-day rolling period on all assets on the platform.
On crypto winter
Crypto winter for a company like Bitstamp is a good period for us to build up our capabilities to prepare for the next bull run with new products and new features. We have a very active licensing journey across all the regions – 10 in progress globally.
Over the next couple of quarters we will increase our regulatory footprint, so we are in a strong position to fully participate in the next bull run.
The second point is that we see a strong trend on the institutional side. Many institutional companies are looking to make their first move into crypto – there is massive crypto interest from our institutional clients.
On interest rates being positive for Bitstamp’s business
I think for Bitstamp we have a level of cash which is quite significant on our balance sheet. The increase in interest rates is therefore having a positive impact on our business. This was not the case before when interests were zero or negative. Since the end of July we are observing a nice return on our cash position.
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