Bitstamp

Bitstamp is a cryptocurrency trading platform. Although the company is legally based in Luxembourg, its operations are in London. The company also has an office in New York City.
== Company History ==
Bitstamp was founded in 2011 in Luxembourg by Nejc Kodrič and Damijan Merlak. When the company started, it was funded by only €1,000 and run between a single server and two laptops, and it was based in a garage.
Having first applied for registration in 2014, Bitstamp was recognized by Luxembourg as a virtual currency exchange in 2016. Pantera Capital, the specialist cryptocurrency and blockchain investment firm from San Francisco, is an investor in Bitstamp, according to Bitstamp's website. Bitstamp's chairman is Don Morehead, who is also chairman of Pantera. 
On August 20, 2018 Bitstamp joined bitFlyer USA, Bittrex, and Gemini to announce the formation of the Virtual Commodity Association Working Group.
In October 2020 Julian Sawyer, Gemini's former head of European operations, left Gemini to become Bitstamp's new chief executive.
On June 6, 2024, Robinhood announced it would acquire Bitstamp for about $200 million.
=== Sale to NXMH ===
In October 2018, Bitstamp announced it had been acquired by NXMH, a Brussels-based private equity and investment firm and one of Bitstamp's earliest investors. According to Nejc Kodrič, Bitstamp took NXMH's offer so that NXMH could help Bitstamp expand globally, though Kodrič said the company had not been looking to sell at the time. Kodrič remained the CEO of Bitstamp, and neither the company nor its customers' experience were expected to change. Though NXMH also owns the South Korean exchange Korbit, Kodrič said that after discussing it internally, all three companies decided it would be best for Bitstamp and Korbit to remain separate companies. The companies plan on sharing research, technology, and other resources.
=== Disputes with Citibank, Bank of America ===
In November 2020, Bitstamp submitted documents in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to subpoena Citibank and Bank of America as part of a discovery process in an ongoing dispute. Bitstamp, which hired CNG to facilitate domestic and international banking transfers for its customers, claimed that Danish firm CNG Processing failed to meet the original terms of its business arrangement as a payments processor for the firm. Bitstamp claims this was because the American banks made it extremely difficult to open the U.S. accounts necessary to do so, and that CNG refused to return security deposits and customer funds, claiming the banks had frozen their accounts.
== Technology ==
In November of 2018 the company selected Cinnober to provide software for its trading platform for cryptocurrencies. Cinnober replaced an in-house developed matching engine. 
On September 10, 2020 the company announced that it had upgraded its trading platform with software provided by Nasdaq. Nasdaq acquired Cinnober in January 2019. According to research conducted by Bitstamp along with Kaiko, a Paris-based digital asset data provider, the new matching engine can perform 1,250 times faster than the previous matcher.
 
== Products and Services ==
Bitstamp offers trading of euros and U.S. dollars against bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin as well as cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency pairs. 
The CME Group includes price data from Bitstamp, along with Coinbase, ItBit, and Kraken, in its CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR) and CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index (BRTI).
== Key People ==
*Julian Sawyer - CEO 
*Damijan Merlak - Co-Founder 
*Edward Kemp - CFO 
*Dan Morehead - Chairman of Bitstamp's Board of Directors 
*Nejc Kodrič - Co-Founder and Advisor to Board of Directors
== References ==
Category:cryptocurrency
Category:Trading
Category:exchanges
Category:CryptoMarketsWiki