Bill Shihara, the CEO of Bittrex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the world, said his company would start offering the possibility to some of its corporate clients to purchase cryptocurrencies in certain states of the United States of America using US dollars. Shihara said: “As an incubator and leading advocate of blockchain technology, Bittrex is committed to listing tokens that not only have the best business applications, but also are the most innovative blockchain projects in the world. Expanding fiat markets to the top digital currencies on our exchange should further drive adoption of this revolutionary technology by providing customers even more options for purchasing and trading digital currencies in a secure, robust and reliable environment with high liquidity.
Corporate customers are only the beginning because we also plan to extend fiat to our retail customers and many of our service providers who build on the Bittrex platform. In addition, today’s fiat announcement is the first step in the next evolution of our business, as we’re continuing our expansion, both locally and globally, through new services and strategic partnerships.”
Until now the exchange platform only allowed the users to perform exchanges between cryptocurrencies, without any possibility to use fiat currencies. In order to start offering the aforementioned service, Bittrex signed a banking agreement with Signature Bank from New York. Signature Bank will be in charge of maintaining the company’s funds in US dollars.
Shihara gave a statement to Bloomberg on May 31st this year, explaining that he considered the agreement with Signature Bank to be more than a vote of confidence to Bittrex, even a vote of confidence to the cryptocurrencies in general. The CEO of Bittrex said: “It’s been a long path. It’s not just about banks being able to trust Bittrex. It’s about banks being able to trust crypto in general. And I think it’s really showing that crypto is turning the corner in terms of mainstream acceptance.”
Initially, Bittrex will offer exchanges in US dollars in pairs with Bitcoin, TrueUSD and Tether. For regulatory reasons, the new service involving US dollars will only be available in the following US states: Washington, New York, Montana and California. Nevertheless, the cryptocurrency exchange hopes to expand its operations in the future.
According to Shihara, the willingness of Signature Bank to work with them no only presents an opportunity to attract more investors, but also a challenge that would increase the functioning of the company’s security protocols: “They really do look and pore through the entire business. They want to make sure that we’ve got robust AML/KYC processes, that we’ve got the right controls on our finances. They do background checks and everything. They really look at our business soup to nuts.”
Although the new service was announced by the CEO of Bittrex back in February this year, we had to wait until now to get more details about it. In February, Shihara announced that Bittrex was planning on introducing the operations with US dollars for some of the company’s clients. This was during an interview given by Shihara to an online radio station called Unikrn, but Shihara did not provide any more details.
It is not strange that only corporate clients would be able to use the new service if we remember the statement given by Shihara: “Bittrex will never be a retail store and the average clients that do not know anything about cryptocurrencies should not trade with Bittrex.”
Bittrex is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the world with more than three million registered users. The cryptocurrency exchange manages a daily volume of almost 100 million dollars, with Bitcoin, TRON, Waves and Cardano being the cryptocurrencies with the largest trading volumes on the exchange platform at the moment.
