Bitpanda Keynote: Global Competitiveness and a Level Playing Field for Europe’s Crypto Industry

Europe is falling behind in global competition. A risk adverse mindset combined with regulation that hinders is bringing us nowhere. We need to stand together and find solutions that are on a global scale to stay competitive. My name is Philip B. I'm one of the managing directors of Bitbounder.

I'm happy to be here today and I'm happy to say we are more than seven service more than 7 million customers today. But that's not even the most specific point. We have created a network with BTS, our blockchain solution part that provides services to many more millions via our partners. Be it on the one hand uh N26, RISE, Ludia and many more. This solution helping us at the end of the day create more customers.

But what I want to talk to you today about is something else. There are three main messages I hope I'm able to convey. Innovation is never risk-f free. The you must start to think globally and it's all about user centric views. So what do I mean with this messages?

What do I mean about the first stop? Innovation is never risk-f free. That's an easy thing to say and it's actually very clear what that means. But in Europe, we define risk as the first thing when we think about innovation. When we look in the uh world, the world is looking and thinking about how can we use AI to innovate?

What are the best cases to work with AI in Europe? We define the risks and think about how to regulate it with the AI act. The US, as we heard today, is thinking about how stable kinds can play a global role. In Europe, we decided to hinder. But the world isn't fractured anymore.

the world doesn't work with borders anymore and hindering something in Europe doesn't mean it doesn't exist worldwide or starts to compete worldwide. Therefore, in order to counteract that, we need enabling regulation that takes in mind the fact that we are now in the world one of those players who compete with the rest of the world and not only with our local markets. So, innovation isn't risk-free. Meaning, we need to take risks. We need to define and accept that something new has a risk and regulate when we understood the risk and not while we are thinking about what we need and how we are able to do it and that comes to the mind of the you must think globally.

Our regulation up to today in many places was thinking how we regulate our European markets. But that's not how this world works. The financial sector now comes into a phase where the brick and mort trading uh world the shops have been when the internet arrived. They found that suddenly their competition is not each other. The competition lies in the internet with global players.

Home bias and the system that everybody uses their own bank is more and more slipping away. The young generations today are using mainly crypto exchanges, brokers like us and our global competitors in Europe, but they are not using the traditional sector anymore. But that also means that I can't divide the world anymore and say an innovation doesn't happen with us. It means we need to work clearly and defining to be successful in Europe means we need to be successful in the world and our competition is not the local player. It's the global framework.

barriers for products are unsuccessful. We have seen in the last years that more and more these barriers are not working in the crypto sector. The main points of money they are losing the predition world is going to this globe players and European players like us and we need to react to that and find a new way to work towards the client and stop thinking that we know what's best for the client and therefore the user is the key thinking about that I as Europe and some of the regulators can really go ahead and say, "Oh, we don't want you to use this product." That has been so unsuccessful. Thinking about what they thought of crypto and having now in Europe more than 50 million adopters shows that the idea of defining for young people what they need to invest in, how the world works doesn't work anymore.

So how do we react to that? We need a supervisor and we need a clear enabling body who looks at that and says we have our ground rules which are laid down already. We enforce them in reality instead of just waiting and not getting a level playing field and also create an environment to say this works of a global level and we cannot barrier our users because if we try to do that what happens if the innovation is happening outside of the U the risks are going to swap over we only have the risk but we don't have the upside. Therefore, gaining and creating EU champions is where we need our next steps to go and to create this kind of things. Three main messages for me easy to go.

The supervision needs to create a level playing field and needs to stop working the way they had. It's not their local players they work and need to check. They need to look at what is globally happening and what is happening in their market not only from their local players. This is going to be a difficult process because that means they have to think differently. The legislator is the second main point we need to work on.

We need to accept the fact that some of the barriers we thought successful are not going to be successful and have not been successful in the past. What does that mean? We need to stop thinking of creating regulation that is only applicable to local market players and we need to bring forward legislation that is global and forward sinking allowing products to work in Europe not with standards that are unimaginary that are not providing forwards and that's a huge problem because with all with that mindset the risk adverse mindset we tend to do the different as a little side note here interestingly Europe has the perfect way actually to do that our regulation tends to be recreated as a first level and the second level and the second level would be way more flexible if we would accept that we can change it we don't need to create the second level before uh we understand what the impact of the first level We need to reync this. Absolutely. Last but not least is the market and that is us.

Global thinking and thinking about what the competition is. It's not our local players. It it is to think the best service needs to be best service in the world. This is what we in Bitb try to do and it's the only way to get successful. If you go ahead and say, "Oh, this is my local competition.

and I'm try to be better at STEM. You're not going to be good enough. And that is true if you're traditional bank, if you're a crypto player, if you're somebody else. We are in a competitive world on a global level and that needs to be there. But does that mean everybody has to do everything alone?

No. I think and that's what other jurisdictions what other markets show us even better is cooperation is possible and we need to work together together and find solutions be it biter technology solutions be it your solutions whatever you do best try to work and use that and cooperate because only with that what you can do best you will be able to succeed on a global level and therefore We need to think and understand nothing is risk-f free and we need to take risks to compete globally. We need to think about regulation on a scale that works worldwide and brings us competitive advantage. And last but not least, it's all about what the user wants because they will define what is necessary and good and not us. Thank you very much.