The Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Landscape – Interview with Jeremy Cho from LakeBTC
Lately, Bitcoin has been gaining momentum while the trading volumes have been growing like never before. Currently, China is leading the digital currency exchange Industry by having one of the largest concentrations of cryptocurrency exchanges and where the highest bitcoin trading volumes can be found.
Most of the Chinese Bitcoin exchanges have large trading volumes. Besides the high trading volumes, this might probably be motivated by the low fees and other benefits (such as referral programs that offer up to 50%) that many Chinese exchanges offer to their customers as well.
High trading volumes are essentially the main attraction tempting traders to come to the exchanges; however, a lot of other techniques are used to motivate traders to choose an exchange over the other. In this sense, Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges have quite a roll of benefits that raise the bar for other competitors. Taking it as an example, LakeBTC, one of the largest Chinese bitcoin exchanges does not charge a fee for deposits. Users can deposit Fiat currency via a bank transfer without having extra costs. It works as an incentive for traders and helps leverage the profits from trading activities.
LakeBTC is a big Chinese BTC exchange. It is one of the “Big Four” BTC exchanges. Founded in early 2013, the exchange integrated a Ripple gateway enabling its customers to bypass all the delays and international bank transfers associated costs. The exchange allows customers to trade in 4 of the major Fiat currencies and it charges very low to virtually no fees. All these advantages are certainly good methods of attracting new traders to the exchange.
To have a more incisive view on the Chinese Bitcoin landscape, NewsBTC interviewed Jeremy Cho, the Communications Manager at LakeBTC.
NewsBTC – Can you tell us a little bit of LakeBTC history and vision?
LakeBTC was started in March 2013 by a group of financial industry veterans. Initially, it was like a side project for a small group of professional capital market traders from investment banks and hedge funds. Later that year, the team decided to incorporate and officially run the exchange under the current domain name. Unlike many other companies in this sector, LakeBTC was born with strong risk management genes and customers’ assets are in good hands with us. Today, LakeBTC is dedicated to bring the latest technologies into the financial services industry and serve users from all over the world. We support trading services between cryptocurrencies and FIAT currencies, and our wallet service is secure, reliable, and free.
NewsBTC – We would like to hear your comments on the Chinese Digital currency exchange landscape.
Again, our focus is aimed at international market. Zero trading fees in the Chinese market is not a healthy indicator at all. If an exchange makes no money from the trading commission fees, it will make it up by either getting involved in high-risk business or committing fraud eventually. No matter what the users will suffer all the loss. Recently bitcoin price pump-and-dump is probably related to a market manipulation, especially for those places with 5x to 50x leverages. LakeBTC has a comprehensive market surveillance program to make sure we provide a secure, liquid, and fair marketplace to all participants.
We have offices in Shanghai, but our customer base comes from all continents. As a matter of fact, the majority of our users are from outside China. That being said, we do have our perspectives and sources to interpret the Chinese regulatory and ecosystem landscape. Compared to many other countries, Chinese authorities do have an accurate and clear understanding of cryptocurrencies. As of now, the regulatory environment is reasonable and appropriate – to fight against money laundering and Ponzi schemes on one hand, and to encourage innovations on the other. LakeBTC is compliant with all applicable laws/regulations and we do strict AML/KYC checks. This is to the best interest of our users too.
NewsBTC – LakeBTC is one of the major Chinese BTC exchanges. We heard you have some interesting plans for 2016. Can you comment on that?
Our goal is to make financial services affordable and accessible to all users globally. To that end, we’ll add more financial products to LakeBTC, make deposits and withdrawals more convenient and cost-efficient to people from different countries, and make our application more user-friendly. We’ll further strengthen our technology security measures, risk management, and internal control processes. LakeBTC is probably the only major exchange with zero security events since inception.
NewsBTC – Bitcoin and the Blockchain are going mainstream. Many investments are being made in the industry. Besides your plans for 2016 what more can you tell us about future prospects for the exchange?
LakeBTC started from a bitcoin exchange, but we will be more than that. LakeBTC is a wallet plus an exchange, and its way beyond bitcoin. The goal is to enable all users to send/receive payments worldwide easily and instantly for free, to trade currencies, equities, bonds, commodities, funds and all other financial products and asset classes they like, to manage their day-to-day spending and balance long-term risk appetites and returns without paying hefty fees.
NewsBTC – What’s your take on the digital currency Industry current situation?
As far as bitcoin industry is concerned, there are both positive and negative signs. It’s getting more attention from the public and big banks (and the regulators). On the other hand, hashing power concentration, politics in the community, security scandals, and market manipulations cast a shadow on the reputation and the future of bitcoin. There’s still a long way ahead of us and we are still in the early stage of the development of bitcoin. LakeBTC, as a leading bitcoin firm, will be working hard to bring more innovations to all users and at the same time, stress on security, liquidity, and fairness more than ever before.
The post The Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Landscape – Interview with Jeremy Cho from LakeBTC appeared first on NEWSBTC.