INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bitpanda CEO Eric Demuth says that crypto will remain one of their main businessesEric Demuth wanted to become a ship captain before
that valued the startup at $4.1 billion
Demuth and Klanschek each own about a fifth of the firm, a holding worth roughly $820 million on paper, according to calculations by
Bloomberg.Their outsized stakes demonstrate the advantages of bootstrapping the company and its years of profitability, co-chief executive
expanding as digital assets edge into the mainstream
Undeterred by the pandemic or this year's swings in crypto prices, Bitpanda is offering equities trading, a payment card which allows you
to pay for your coffee with Bitcoin or even Tesla Inc
stock and is building a new headquarters in Vienna.Demuth discussed fundraising, the world of fintech and his ambition to diversify
His comments have been edited and condensed.What have you learnt during this fundraising round?Getting someone who really supports you and
who still has deep pockets for future rounds is so efficient
Of course we could have gone out and maybe even secured a higher valuation, but Paul and I saved so much time by not having to do the whole
roadshow thing after we decided to do another round with Valar.I would advise anybody looking at a Series A to pick the right investors who
can do the exact same thing in future rounds.How did you start Bitpanda?We put all of our savings in there and tried to bootstrap the
We wanted to be profitable very early on before we got the first investors on board.How do you view the competition?I don't consider Revolut
a crypto site, although they also offer crypto like many others
there are more products coming for that space
But on the other hand we now want to make investing in general available for everybody in Europe.Revolut is building a superapp which does
We are focusing very much only on investing and trading.Why did you become an entrepreneur?It first started when I realized how banks work
I come from a family that is, I'd say, normal middle class
I remember when I was at school and I started to get interested into finance stuff and a bank adviser advised my parents to buy some stuff
and I looked at it and they didn't lose money on it but it was overly expensive.I got so angry that I said this is a scam, they say they are
your adviser but really they're a salesperson
So I always wanted to do something to fix the system.We're trying to build Bitpanda so people don't need all these middlemen
People can just do things on their own.How is the world of crypto changing?The demographic when we started the company was clones of me,
Now it has completely changed
thing is, which is something we want to change, most of our users by far are male so there is a huge potential of getting women
involved.What do you do to relax?I'm a gamer
There's a meme that you sit in front of a computer all day to afford to sit in front of the computer all night
