coindesk.com
Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, is poised to introduce a “super app,” in Europe that will offer similar functions to a regular bank account, while adding regulated derivatives and tokenized stocks to its existing spot crypto trading capabilities.
The Dubai-based firm, which was founded in 2018 and serves over 80 million users, has been granted an electronic money institution (EMI) license by its European regulator, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA), the exchange’s founder and CEO Ben Zhou said in an interview with Coindesk.
Bybit, which already holds a Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) license in Austria, giving it access to the entire European Union, is about to acquire a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) license as well, Zhou said, which allows firms to offer financial products such as debt securities and derivatives.
“With these three licenses, we will become kind of like Revolut, plus what is currently offered by Bybit,” Zhou said in an interview. “And this is all completely regulated and compliant, and I'm quite excited about it. Because there are not many other regions where you can do that.”
Revolut, founded in 2015 and based in London, now holds a full banking license in the EU and U.K., and also caters to more than 80 million customers worldwide. The fintech was valued in July at about $115 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Zhou has been candid that a MiCA license alone is not enough to turn a profit in Europe, given the burden of compliance costs plus competition from other firms that can offer a more extensive range of products, such as derivatives. The EMI license will suffice for most of what Bybit wants to bring with its all-in-one place app, he said.
“For the EU, the fact is you need multiple licenses to compete and actually to turn a profitable business,” Zhou said. “The cost of getting a MiCA license is not so cheap. To be frank, we've been running the MiCA license for about a year now. It is not profitable.”
Meanwhile, there’s stiff competition across the bloc from financial apps such as Revolut, Zhou added.
“Unless you have all the bells and whistles and product lines, clients won't shift just simply because you have something called crypto,” he said. “So there is the compliance burden, there’s the competitive environment. But what makes EU quite interesting is that you can present, in a very compliant way, the one super app.