In an interview, Sebastian Serrano, CEO of the Argentinean exchange of cryptomoedas Ripio, praised the recently purchased BitcoinTrade and said that a lack of professionalism hindered negotiations with other companies in Brazil.
Sebastian Serrano, CEO of the Argentinean exchange Ripio, gave an interview on Monday commenting on the recent acquisition of the Brazilian BitcoinTrade by the exchange and lamented the „lack of professionalism“ of the Brazilian market. The article is from Bitcoin’s Portal.
Bitcoin reaches historical maximum against national currencies of several countries
In the interview, Serrano talks about the purchase of one of the largest exchanges in the Brazilian market, Crypto Trader, and guarantees that the two exchanges should coexist, Ripio and BitcoinTrade, at least for now.
According to him, BitcoinTrade will specialize in the trading sector in search of professional traders, while Ripio will bet even more on new investors interested in buying and keeping cryptomoedas:
„We are unifying the systems now to have the same compliance and allow users to use the same login and password for both accounts. We now have 1.3 million users between the two companies, including Argentines“.
Living different crises, Argentina and Chile resort to Bitcoin for economic protection
He also dealt with the differences between the Brazilian market, the largest in Latin America, and the Argentinean market, where the traction of the crypto market is greater, because of the dollarized economy and real inflation.
„Argentines use Bitcoin (BTC) more as a value reserve. The Brazilian acquires Bitcoin as an opportunity more linked to investment and trading,“ he said, adding:
„Brazil is the largest market in Latin America, but the country has something very different from the Argentinean market. In Argentina, the most important product are the portfolios, in Brazil are the exchanges. The Brazilian user is more investor/trader and, to have a market share, we needed to have a good exchange“.
Ripio’s CEO says that what drew the company’s attention to BitcoinTrade was the professionalism, according to him something rare in the Brazilian cryptoesphere. He recognizes that he talked with other exchanges in the process:
„It is true that we talked with other companies. In some cases, the time in the market was not good for operations; in others they had not so professional operations. The Brazilian market doesn’t have many professional teams working with cryptomoedas. It is something that Ripio has, in good measure for having received investments even from Silicon Valley, very professional people. Unfortunately, in the Brazilian market there wasn’t a lot of venture capital investment in the exchanges, so they are operations maybe less professional and this made many conversations difficult“.
About the competition in the Brazilian market, the acquisition of the Brazilian exchange should expand Ripio’s performance in the country, a movement that brings Argentina to the competition with another international exchange, Bitso, which is also expanding in the country with new venture capital investments.
Serrano says that Ripio takes advantage for already having an office in the country for some years, commanded by Ricardo Da Ros, Country Manager of the Argentinean exchange in the country. The biggest competitor is still the Brazilian Bitcoin Market, the biggest exchange in the continent:
„Today the clear leader is the Bitcoin Market. Binance has a slightly different product because it is a more global company, another type of trading, but widely used in Brazil. But Ripio is working hard to take this position“.
Hackers use ransomware and close the borders of Argentina demanding $ 4 million in Bitcoin
In the interview, he still says he doesn’t believe that the Argentine government tries to regulate the cryptomoeda sector very early, since the biggest concern of the country is about the reserves in dollars, and not about the negotiation of cryptomoeda in pesos. Nevertheless, since November the country’s congress has been discussing a bill to try to regulate the sector.