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Binance has launched its European services only a day ago and the wave of registrations are already massive. With its new platform in Jersey and offering the British Pound (GBP) and Euro (EUR) trading pairs with Bitcoin (BTC), Binance has just seized a huge market. In less than 24 hours, the exchange’s European division is already full of new clients.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the founder of Binance, has affirmed that the company is “overwhelmed” with so many people registering and that there is a backlog of Know Your Customer verifications that have to be made before whitelisting so many people.
He affirmed that they underestimated the market and did not believe that so many people would want to register so quickly, so the systems are running slightly slow for the moment.
Despite Bitcoin dropping around 80% in price in the last months, a lot of people are still interested in it and this is the ultimate proof of that. The efforts of companies like Binance which are in the process of continuous expansion, are actually paying off and are facilitating mainstream adoption little by little.
What is sure is that Binance will have a stiff competition in Europe. Many key players are already in the country, so it will be hard to carve out some space in this new market, but it looks like things are going smoothly, at least in the first 24 hours. Coinbase and Bitstamp are two of the most important competitors that CZ will have to face in order to establish Binance in Europe as a winner.
According to the CFO of Binance, Wei Zhou, though, Binance’s expansion into Europe is good for the whole industry. He says that fiat to crypto “ramps” are critical for people to enter the market as new users will not buy crypto with crypto.
Because of this, Zhou believes that this will provide new important opportunities for both the company and the whole market as well and that they want to create a real channel for people in Europe to enter the crypto world just like a lot of people are doing in the U.S. and in Asia.
It is also important to notice that Binance really needs to up its game if it wants to be relevant in 2019. In 2018, Binance was the king of the market and companies like Coinbase had to watch it, but 2019 will be the year in which companies like Bakkt, the crypto exchange and liquidity provider created by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) will be in the field.
With large corporations from Wall Street entering the game to win, Binance has to evolve and grow or it may lose its place in the market and be left behind.
What To Expect From Europe?
While Europe already had a Bitcoin market way before Bitcoin exploded into the mainstream, its growth is somewhat slow when compared to Asian markets, for instance. According to data which was taken from CryptoCompare, the whole daily volume of Bitcoin in Europe is less than 4% of the world volume and the whole Europe ranks behind both the U. S. and Japan.
If Europe’s market will grow, 2019 is probably the year for it. During most of the year, the country had regulation problems and has seen a slow improvement in its crypto economy. Now, however, Binance is eyeing this market, so we may see some significant growth this year.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.