Backpack Opens Regulated Perpetuals Exchange in Europe After Buying FTX EU

Backpack Exchange, a worldwide cryptocurrency buying and selling platform, mentioned Monday that its European division, Backpack EU, is formally reside.

Operating out of Cyprus and licensed beneath the European Union’s MiFID II framework, the change is positioning itself as one of many first absolutely regulated venues in Europe to supply crypto derivatives, beginning with perpetual futures.

“As far as I’m aware, it’s just going to be us and Kraken” in Europe providing perpetual futures, Armani Ferrante, the CEO of Backpack, mentioned in an interview with CoinDesk.

The debut follows Backpack’s acquisition of FTX EU earlier this yr. In January, the FTX chapter property mentioned the sale of FTX EU to Backpack was not licensed. Since then, the difficulty has been resolved and in April the change started distributing funds to former FTX EU prospects, fulfilling their pledge to compensate customers affected by the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire.

Backpack EU will present customers entry to over 40 buying and selling pairs with as much as 10x leverage, the staff mentioned in a press release. The platform says it goals to present each retail and institutional merchants a compliant gateway to superior crypto buying and selling merchandise.

The rollout additionally highlights Backpack’s broader technique of rebuilding belief in digital belongings following a string of change failures.

“You give trust by doing good things every day over a long period of time. It’s compounded,” Ferrante said. “It takes time to build trust and a single day to lose it. And so I think, ultimately, our approach has always been to just try to get better every day and do the right thing at every step of the way.”

Part of that technique is tapping into its proof-of-reserves system. Ferrante says the change publishes its validators’ attestations every day utilizing zero-knowledge proofs. “It should be the bar. You can do this every day, there’s no reason why you can’t,” he mentioned.

Since 2024, the corporate mentioned it has processed greater than $160 billion in buying and selling quantity globally.

The staff additionally plans to develop in different areas.

“We’re working on the exact same thing here in Japan,” Ferrante mentioned. “That’s probably going to be our next place that we turn our eyes to with respect to licensing.”

Read extra: New FTX EU Owner Backpack Initiates Customer Claims Process