Bitget, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, is making a noisy entrance into the SA market with products such as credit cards linked to your crypto wallet and tokensied shares, explains its head of growth for Africa, Callan Richardson. From Moneyweb.
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.
Bitget, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, is the latest entrant to the SA market, and there’s no doubt that it is going to shake up an already crowded field.
It brings an interesting bag of products to the local market, including a credit card linked to your crypto wallet that allows you to spend pretty much anywhere, and some mouth-watering returns on your crypto – up to 10% annually on bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), as well as on US dollar-pegged stablecoins like Tether and USDC.
In this podcast, Callan Richardson, head of growth for Africa at Bitget, delves into the origins of Bitget in 2018 in the teeth of a crypto bear market, focusing initially on South America and Europe.
Bitget brings more than 800 crypto pairs to the local market, and the ability to buy tokenised stocks such as Tesla, Nvidia and an S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (ETF) – for as little as $5.
As Richardson explains, this is a feature enabled by blockchain technology, allowing for fractional ownership of assets such as stocks and real estate.
Over and above that, it offers futures on dozens of cryptos for those looking for a little more excitement.
Bitget publishes its proof of reserves, currently double that of customer deposits held. It also has a $773 million Protection Fund backing customer deposits.
With soccer legend Lionel Messi as brand ambassador, and Juventas – among others – as sponsored teams, Bitget is adopting a similar approach in SA as it lines up brand ambassadors to introduce a name that has, until now, been relatively unknown in SA.
The company is licensed by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and gives local crypto enthusiasts access to more than 800 crypto pairs. Richardson says the company’s tiered pricing model is lower than most crypto exchanges in SA.
With its low costs, high yields on crypto, a spend-anywhere credit card and a vast range of crypto pairs, Bitget is about to make a noisy entrance to the SA market.
