Brazilian brokerage XP Inc will open its digital assets trading platform to clients in mid-August. It initially offers bitcoin and ether, but the company’s director for financial products stated that it plans to increase the number of users by the end this year.
In an interview with Reuters, Lucas Rabechini stated that clients who have an “adequate financial profile for such operations,” will be permitted to join the Xtage platform. This is a new feature which will only be available to employees starting next month.
XP currently serves 3.6 million clients, but stated that crypto trading will be compliant with eligibility rules like the risk tolerance of each client.
Rabechini stated that there would be 10 additional cryptoassets for trading by the end of next year and December.
As crypto giants like Celsius and Voyager collapsed, digital currencies have been the center of attention. Bitcoin has lost approximately 50% of its value this year. Rabechini stated that such shockwaves did not alter XP’s long term focus on crypto.
“You could say that the volume has been low, there will not be many orders,” he stated, adding that XP had developed a “superfast” order execution technology with Nasdaq Inc .
Xtage was first announced by XP in May. Employees began testing it in July.
Itau Unibanco (ITUB4.SA), and Nubank – all major financial players in Brazil – are expected to challenge the company.
Rabechini stated that there are many competitors who do their homework. Some are quite competent, but we are also competent.
