Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures has led a €30 million ($33 million) investment in a company created from the spinout of Bitpanda Pro, helping fill a gap in Europe for a regulated marketplace for crypto derivatives.
(Bloomberg) — Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures has led a €30 million ($33 million) investment in a company created from the spinout of Bitpanda Pro, helping fill a gap in Europe for a regulated marketplace for crypto derivatives.
The independent platform is called One Trading and has applied to the Dutch financial watchdog for a trading venue license under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. Thiel already backs the exchange’s former parent, Vienna-based Bitpanda GmbH.
“It’s about how you bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto,” said One Trading’s Chief Executive Josh Barraclough, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co executive. “The writing was always on the wall that crypto would become more regulated. I take a TradFi lens and bring the benefits of that to crypto.”
Bitpanda will retain a stake in One Trading, according to a company statement, which didn’t disclose the size of the stake or the firm’s overall valuation.
One Trading currently offers spot trading in cryptocurrencies and has been revamping its technology and processes to provide institutional-grade technology to all customer types. That will include rolling out a faster matching engine and a membership model aimed at large liquidity providers, akin to platforms that facilitate trading in established asset classes.
Year-Long Turmoil
The spinout comes after a string of crypto collapses and scandals, culminating with the bankruptcy of Bahamas-based FTX in November. The spectacular failure of Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange — a favorite among professional traders — exacerbated a crisis of confidence in centralized venues which have since suffered from stagnating volumes and increased asset withdrawals by users.
Many firms, including Bitpanda, have had to cut staff as the value of crypto assets slumped.
The year-long turmoil has also triggered an intense crackdown on the industry by financial regulators and policymakers around the world who have sought to enforce or develop rules to safeguard investors accessing the market.
Earlier this month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued both Coinbase and Binance alleging securities rules violations. In April, European lawmakers gave their final blessing to the EU’s Markets in Cryptoassets, or MiCA, a sweeping regime that will give the bloc its first rules to govern the crypto industry.
One Trading currently holds a virtual asset service provider license in Italy, and said a full-scale MiFID license in the Netherlands would enable it to list regulated financial instruments to both institutions and sophisticated retail investors. Other investors in the round include MiddleGame Ventures, Speedinvest, Keyrock and Wintermute Ventures.
–With assistance from Cagan Koc.
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