BUX has acquired European social cryptocurrency investment platform ‘Blockport’, and will subsequently be registering itself with the central bank of the Netherlands, ‘De Nederlandsche Bank’ (DNB) or ‘Dutch Central Bank’, as a cryptocurrency services provider.
This acquisition was announced on the press release segment on the official BUX press page as helping to “further expand BUX’s service offerings and will continue to drive the company’s mission to become the single destination for young investors in Europe.
Blockport is to be rebranded as ‘BUX Crypto’ and will represent the first foray from BUX into the cryptocurrency sector. Furthermore, it is stated that Blockport will also “be fully integrated into the BUX brand”.
This rebranded platform is currently being tested with a small sample of clients and is set for release at some point in the first quarter of 2020. It is also set to register with the ‘De Nederlandsche Bank’ (DNB) / ‘Dutch Central Bank’.
“By including this asset class, BUX is now uniquely situated to position itself as a 360-degree solution for all the investing needs of European millennials…
“BUX Crypto will be located at BUX headquarters in Amsterdam.
Further updates on BUX Crypto’s product roadmap as well as new features that BUX users can look forward to will be shared at a later date.”
BUX (press release)
De Nederlandsche Bank, or Dutch Central Bank (DNB), claims that its mission is “to safeguard financial stability” – a motto that’s fairly open to interpretation. It describes itself as an independent central bank, supervisory authority and resolution authority,
Additionally, it works in partnership with other entities in Europe to achieve…
- “Price stability and a balanced macroeconomic development in Europe.”
- “A shock-resilient financial system and a secure, reliable and efficient payment system.”
- “Strong and sound financial institutions that meet their obligations and commitments.”
BUX is a finance-focused tech company which was launched in 2014. On its website, it claims to serve “over two million customers in nine European countries: the Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
The company is comprised of 106 team members who work across its Amsterdam and London offices.
Back in June 2019, BUX announced the successful completion of a $12.5M funding round led by venture capital firms Velocity Capital and Holtzbrinck Ventures. This brought the total amount of funding raised by BUX to $35M.
Part of the funding from this round was contributed to the acquisition of online broker ‘Ayondo Markets Limited (AML)’, in addition to supporting the launch of the company’s ‘STOCKS’ mobile investing app (which reportedly has over 100,000 users on its “waitlist”.
Ayondo Markets Limited (AML) additionally marks the first acquisition made by Bux since 2014.
In November, 2019 BUX formally appointed an ex-Ripple executive to its leadership – namely Aditya Pasumarty – to become its first ‘Head of Growth’. Pasumarty is tasked with leading the evolution of the BUX mobile app, whilst focusing primarily on user growth and revenues.
He will also “lead the Product and Marketing teams; guiding the company’s long-term product vision and growth strategy; and continuously innovating the core product offering to deliver a dynamic customer experience”.
