Erald Ghoos

Authored by Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe Last week I wrote about the great crypto migration underway since MiCA's deadline, and about the difference between a licence and a proof. This week I want to build on that, because I think there's a genuinely good story here that gets buried whenever the industry has a rough news cycle: trust in this space isn't fragile, it's compounding. Every year there are more ways for users to check for themselves that a platform is what it says it is, and fewer places left for platforms to hide if it isn't.

Authored by Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe For years, choosing a crypto exchange was mostly a matter of brand recognition and liquidity. In the space of a single month, that calculus has changed completely, and millions of users are looking for a new home right now.

Today we're increasing our European deposit bonus pool to €50 million. The original allocation was almost fully claimed within 48 hours. That’s encouraging because it reflects what we’re seeing across the region: customers increasingly want regulated platforms with a complete product offering.

X-Perps for the Magnificent 7 (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla), four major commodities (Gold, Silver, WTI Crude Oil, Brent Crude Oil), and SPY and QQQ, the two most-traded ETFs in the world by daily share volume, are now available to European customers on OKX, with SpaceX to follow on Friday, following the most anticipated IPO in the past two decades. All available 24/7, with up to 10x leverage. Now you can rotate between crypto and other assets the moment something moves using the same account and margin.

By Erald Ghoos, CEO OKX Europe Many European customers are sitting on idle assets, particularly stablecoins, with fewer options to put them to work. Several platforms have scaled back or removed reward products entirely in order to adapt to the new regulatory environment. What I’ve consistently heard from our customers is simple: they want flexible ways to use their crypto, without relying on opaque structures or rigid lock-up terms.

The reports coming out of Poland in recent weeks are not a crypto story. This is a consumer protection story.Hundreds of thousands of users cannot get their money out. A Bitcoin wallet worth approximately $330 million [~1.19 Billion / ~€280 million], which the exchange's own CEO pointed to on camera last week as proof of solvency, sits untouched because nobody at the company holds the private key; and the founder who does has been missing since March 2022. Poland's Prime Minister has told parliament that the exchange funded politicians who voted against crypto regulation, and alleged ties to Russia. Criminal investigators are involved. Poland's consumer protection authority, UOKiK, has been receiving and processing complaints from affected users and has an open investigation against the exchange.