Italy-based One Trading raises €30M to bridge the gap between crypto, traditional asset trading

Milan-based One Trading (formerly Bitpanda Pro), a digital asset exchange that used to operate under the Bitpanda Pro brand, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €30M and is fully separated from Bitpanda.

The Italian company mentions that the funds will help strengthen its offering of crypto assets to retail and institutional investors in Europe.

Bitpanda will continue to own stock in One Trading. 

Investors supporting One Trading

The investment was led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures with participation from MiddleGame Ventures, Speedinvest, Keyrock, and Wintermute Ventures.

James Fitzgerald, a founding partner of Valar Ventures, says, “The crypto markets have struggled to create a regulated solution that both institutions and retail customers can believe in long-term.”

“With Joshua’s experience at JP Morgan and the tradFi, crypto and regulatory clout that he brings to the opportunity, we believe One Trading will regain traders’ trust and build confidence in a product that delivers both on regulation and improved technology,” he adds.

“Secure, regulated and trusted European exchange”

Bitpanda Pro, which was launched in 2019 to give experienced traders, financial professionals, and institutions regulated and safe access to digital assets, has been discontinued to make room for One Trading, a new company fully independent of Bitpanda.

Commenting on the separation, Bitpanda CEO Eric Demuth says, “It is our philosophy at Bitpanda that you have to stay agile and focused to provide the best services in this fast environment.”

“Since we first launched Bitpanda Pro, given its potential, we always knew and planned that its success would naturally make it evolve to become its own business.”

One Trading, led by Joshua Barraclough, aims to solve Europe’s lack of regulated venues by delivering more ‘sophisticated’ crypto products like derivatives and spot trading to both institutional and retail consumers.

According to a statement, there is a large gap in offering long-term product confidence and success since many traditional financial providers lack experience in the crypto industry. 

One Trading is aiming at a sector that has lately been shaken by a lack of confidence caused by inadequate regulation and a departure from traditional financial safeguards – something Barraclough hopes to restore.

Barraclough says, “We will be going live shortly with what we believe to be the fastest and most scalable exchange (< 250-microsecond order create/cancel) based on real-world metrics available to a shared retail and institutional audience.”

“We aim to become a utility for large liquidity providers to exchange unlimited amounts of risk under a membership model instead of pay-per-trade and have low fees and deep books for retail with a number of liquidity protections.”

“We will then start listing more products with appropriate controls and vetting as we move into derivatives. Above all we want a regulated, institutional-grade platform where people feel safe to trade with unique product options,” adds Barraclough.

A crypto venue for everyone

One Trading plans to operate as a Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) Trading Venue as this will enhance its current VASP licence and enable its platform to provide capital-efficient spot and derivative products for all customer types.

MiFID is a cornerstone of EU financial services legislation, defining which investment services and activities must be licenced throughout the EU and the organisational and behaviour criteria that firms offering such services must meet.

VASP licences are perpetual licences to the bought software release as well as all minor updates to that release for the first three years after the licence is completed. Any further updates will need the renewal of the licence.

Additionally, One Trading also claims to provide a high degree of security for clients that go through rigorous Know Your Customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), and client suitability checks.

The company will be able to list financial instruments thanks to the full-scale MiFID licence. It will also be possible to create brand-new products that are carefully vetted, transparent, and customer-safe. 

The platform also provides access to instantaneous settlement electronic OTC trading with the “fastest” retail-facing spot exchange in the industry, all underpinned by institutional-grade security and post-trade settlement capabilities.