Bitpanda founders Christian Trummer, Paul Klanschek and Eric Demuth. Image: Bitpanda
After becoming Austria’s first unicorn last year, Bitpanda has nearly doubled its user base and is now offering its services in Ireland.
Crypto trading platform Bitpanda is expanding its services to Ireland to meet growing demand in the digital assets space.
The platform’s growth here will be led by Rob Cumiskey, who has taken over as country lead and head of marketing for Bitpanda in Ireland.
Cumiskey is a former chief marketing officer of investment company MyWallSt and former head of EMEA growth at Hailo. He has also previously worked at Google and Workhuman in various roles.
“We have a growing community of Bitpanda users in the Irish market, which doesn’t surprise us at all given the early adopter nature of the market,” Cumiskey said.
“With this in mind, we have been investing in our local Bitpanda team and we want to make sure that we have the best possible product based on local needs across Europe. I personally can’t wait to lead our growth efforts here and show Ireland what Bitpanda has to offer.”
Through its mobile app, Bitpanda allows users to invest in digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and crypto indices, as well as commission-free fractional stocks, EFTs, commodities and precious metals.
It became Austria’s first unicorn in March 2021 when it raised $170m at a valuation of $1.2bn, with a Series B investment round led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. Months later, this valuation went up to $4.1bn after a $263m Series C funding round.
Founded in 2014 by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek and Christian Trummer, the Vienna-headquartered company describes itself as a ‘neobroker’ for the trading of digital assets but also traditional assets.
It now has more than 730 team members and nearly 4m customers, which is almost twice the number of users it had when it reached unicorn status last year.
Demuth, who is Bitpanda’s CEO, said that the company is “setting the bar for retail investing in Europe” with regulation and security for digital assets. “As recent events have shown, where you invest matters,” he added.
“We are giving European investors a better choice because we believe that digital assets and blockchain technology are reinventing what it means to invest, and we remain committed to building simple, easy-to-use and fully regulated financial products for everyone.”
Several crypto platforms are making moves in the Irish market, with European players Lightyear and Trade Republic launching their trading services in recent months. Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, launched its platform in Ireland last month.
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