Crypto.com CEO Says Bitcoin Sales May Pick Up Around 'Halving'

First off, the pros and cons are doing business in Hong Kong. Obviously, we are very pleased with the change in Hong Kong environment in terms of approach to digital assets. There has been a new framework that came out from the royalty perspective and this recent conditional approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs is a sign of of of a general support for the market development in Hong Kong. So we’re quite pleased with it. And how does Hong Kong compare to a market like Korea, for instance, where there is great interest in crypto among our retail investors and you’re launching your app at the end of the month. How do you expect to do in a market like Korea? Korea has historically been very difficult for overseas players to enter and we’ve spent almost two years preparing for launch. It’s obviously one of the largest crypto markets globally with very, very high adoption rate and extremely active retail user base. So we’ll see how we’ll do. We are in it for the long term. We’ve entered through acquisition of two licenses and a very prolonged product build out. So do our best to provide a competitive product offering to Korean consumers. But in terms of products and services, what can be expected after launching your app? All right, we will give our mission is to provide access to digital assets on a global level and doing it in a regulatory compliant manner. So users in Korea can expect us to continue in this fashion being the trusted place where they could trade crypto and a good selection of it further down the road. We are very well known for our crypto card program. We are the largest Visa Crypto card program globally. We will do our best to launch it in Korea locally as soon as possible. Chris, I want to talk about the spot Bitcoin ETF that was bigger than expected demand for it. What are you, what assumption are you making about appetite going forward and the long term impact that may have? I think structurally it’s a very good setup. You’ve got daily large scale inflows and this is against the backdrop of Bitcoin halving coming in a couple of days which will reduce the supply side further. So I think structurally this is well positioned. Obviously Bitcoin and and crypto right now in general is part of the global financial system. So we are not completely disconnected from what’s happening in in in equities for example, and what’s happening with monetary policy or with what’s happening in the geopolitical environment. So I think there’s a general consolidation phase going on right now, which is similar to the previous cycles. And I expect pretty decent action within the six months following the Bitcoin having. Do you see any change in terms of the crypto market structure on the back of that not to that ETF, definitely, definitely you know those are flows that were previously not present. So I would say that probably the proportion of of Bitcoin prices being driven by retail activity or small investor activity versus institutions is is changing during this cycle. And you know the things that we should look forward to is the decision making on Bitcoin ETFs and perhaps some other current cryptocurrency ETFs or even cryptocurrency basket ETFs in the future. Because again this may strengthen the flows. Chris, you talked about the Bitcoin having expected to happen in April and just wondering how much impact that may have given, you know the kind of demand we’re seeing for that ETF of late. Might that take away some of the impact? I would say that this just improves the overall situation because you’ve got less Bitcoin coming into the market that is being sold by the miners and you’re just cutting this in half. So you know it it, it won’t make a difference over a day or two or a week but over a period of six months it it’s, it makes a substantial difference. So I think this isn’t that’s not very positive development for the market. One has to always remember that there is this buy the rumour, sell the news kind of thing. So as we approach this, this date, there may be some selling coming up, right? And you know, we’re seeing an easing of Bitcoin prices right now below 64,000 as we speak. I’m just wondering, do you see the rally continuing? What might lead Bitcoin higher from here? Oh, again, I think this is a period of consideration. We’ve seen exactly the same factor happening in the previous cycles. So this is an asset that you want to hold for a very long period of time. You should measure it in years, if not decades. So I strongly recommend everybody who has this kind of time horizon to add it to their portfolio and I personally expect great performance within the next six months. In terms of your own strategy at crypto.com, how does it look like for the next 612 months? For us this is all about scaling the size of the platform. We are approaching 100 million users as you mentioned in the beginning. We also hit 250 during this cycle. The retail intent so far has been muted comparing to the previous cycle. So it gives us this kind of notion that we are still early into those are the early innings of the cycle. So it’s all about scaling. And again, we’ve almost completed our regulatory licensing puzzle in all major markets. So we’re ready to grow the business as as fast as we possibly can at a time when we’re seeing pretty aggressive strategies from Chinese exchanges. How might you counter that? We have a completely different strategy and you know we we’re building this business to for the last decades, right. So from day one we’ve KYC every single customer on the platform. We followed very stringent rules regarding anti money laundering. So this is our way of building this business and we believe that if the market is supposed to reach a billion people, it has to be done properly on a sound foundation of regulatory compliance. So we pair this with pretty decent efforts in terms of brand building because you want to be the trusted place for people to interact with cryptocurrency. So I think our strategy does not change. Some of our competitors that pursued somewhat aggressive tactics are now in hot water and we are perfectly positioned to take advantage of that. Chris, given your expansion plans and your long term plans as well, I mean what are your hiring plans on the back of that and which markets are likely to drive growth, right. So we’re we’re hiring right now, but we’re doing so very thoughtfully and strategically. We’ve got a couple 100 openings in the company outside of the customer service which we scaled by about 700 people in the last couple of months, but outside of of customer service to meet the the the new demand and increase traffic, we are doing so very thoughtfully and strategically. Again we want to make sure that we remain very nimble, fast moving company in this rapidly developing space so that we can capture all the opportunities. We don’t want to be you know a very large slow moving corporate. That’s just not how we want to build a company. Any plans for sponsorship, will you continue with F1, UFC for instance. Those are great properties and great, great partners that we have multi year relationships with. I think we’ve already established ourselves as a globally recognized trusted brand. We will again be very selective moving forward. Thank you speaking. Not all of these partnerships move the needle for a brand like crypto.com. So we want to make sure that whatever we choose to do is true to us and what we stand for as a brand.