Karl Naim: In 2013, a small team in Zug, Switzerland, started trading Bitcoin. Almost no institution would touch it. Today, that firm holds licenses in Switzerland, Europe and Bermuda and, more recently, Abu Dhabi, making the Middle East a priority. Andrej Majcen, co-founder and group CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, welcome to the show.
Andrej Majcen: Thank you very much for having me, Karl.
Karl Naim: Andrej, it’s great to have you, and welcome back to Abu Dhabi. So you co-founded Bitcoin Suisse in 2013. That’s 13 years ago, as we were discussing earlier. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in who your clients are?
Andrej Majcen: I mean, a lot has changed. The question is what is still the same, right? And it’s not just clients, but also the demand for the industry, and the asset class in itself. While it was primarily retail clients or private clients in the past, it’s now actually the institutions. In the past it was more people that had doubts in the traditional financial sector, and now it is actually the traditional financial sector itself. And that’s quite an evolution.
Karl Naim: Yeah. And I assume a bigger proportion of your clients are actually coming from traditional finance, getting into the space. Now, you stepped back from a Swiss banking license that you were looking to get, to focus on growth. So what did that decision teach you?
Andrej Majcen: I mean, first we have to go back a bit to why we actually went for the Swiss banking license. Starting as a pioneer in Switzerland in the financial industry 13 years ago, at that time there was no real clarity around what Bitcoin actually is. I mean, is it an asset? Is it a property? Is it a coin? Is it money? How do you treat it from a legal perspective? Only after a certain time, when regulatory and legal certainty came, we started to see that this potentially goes into traditional financial regulatory territory. And then we decided to go for a bank license, because it gives the full range of possibilities.
In that process, we found out that, yeah, probably we’re not ready, because from a start of three people to a Swiss bank, it’s quite a step. And at the same time, other regulatory environments and jurisdictions evolved faster and turned out to be very innovation-friendly. That’s also when we started to turn this one-license strategy into a global multi-licensing strategy.
Karl Naim: Yeah, and we’re getting to that. I mean, you have your hands quite full. You’ve had a very, very busy year at Bitcoin Suisse: Switzerland, MiCA in Europe, Bermuda, Abu Dhabi. What is it actually like running one firm across four regulatory jurisdictions?
Andrej Majcen: It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a lot of learning as well. At the end of the day, it’s cool to be part of the growth journey of those different jurisdictions and to learn from those regulatory setups. But of course, it’s also adding a lot of complexity compared to just being on your home turf back in Switzerland.
Karl Naim: Yeah. And we know about cooperation between regulators, between Bermuda, the BMA, and the FSRA in Abu Dhabi. So it’s good to see these regimes talking to each other to make everyone’s life easier. Now let’s talk about Abu Dhabi. Your board, as mentioned earlier, named the Middle East as an area of focus in the area of growth. Why here? Why now? And what’s different about the clients you meet in the region?
Andrej Majcen: That’s a very good question. We started to look at the region already quite a few years ago. I personally then decided to move here three years ago in order to really build it up from scratch. But Europe had a lot of different problems in the past few years, from the energy crisis to whatnot, and we looked into a region that potentially has different opportunities and can potentially work as a hedge against our own market. At the same time, it turned out to have a very innovation-friendly and business-friendly regulatory environment. And then we wanted to set foot basically in this jurisdiction and build something up for the long term.
Karl Naim: And you’ve been building the team on the ground. We were talking earlier, you said there’s eight, close to ten people already based in Abu Dhabi. Now, obviously, 2013 to 2026, you’ve been through a lot of market cycles. What does a crypto firm need to survive the downturns? Because there’s not many people in your position today.
Andrej Majcen: No, there is not. We saw a lot of companies growing up in the industry, but if you look around at who’s still around, it’s a sad story. So it’s a tough market. But on the other side, it’s all about risk management, I would say. Not getting overexcited about all the hype that is out there in the world, all the fancy stuff, but doing the hard and honest work and building up something long term, because you can easily burn your fingers. The industry is extremely fast-growing. We also grew extremely fast as a company, and being a little bit Swiss in that sense, being boring and conservative when it comes to protecting clients’ assets, is of course key in that market. And that’s probably one of the secrets.
Karl Naim: I think one of the things you’ve learned also, by being in the region now for three years, is that here it’s more relationship-based than transactional. And that’s what a lot of firms are still not getting when they come into the region. They travel in and travel out. And I think you at Bitcoin Suisse have shown the right way to do it: being based in the region, investing in the region and building those relationships over time. Now, for institutions watching the sector from New York to Abu Dhabi, what should they watch when it comes to regulation and structure over the next six months? What should they look out for in digital assets?
Andrej Majcen: I think [unclear: “regulatory bias”] there is already quite a lot of regulatory certainty and clarity around the globe. But what is happening now is the next big wave of institutional adoption. There is not any major bank out there that is not currently working on a digital asset strategy. So I think this next wave is really going to be [unclear: “driven by threat, by threat”] for banks and financial institutions. And there is a lot cooking under the hood, so a lot is happening in the near future.
Karl Naim: Great. Andrej, we wish you and the team the best of luck in the region. You’ve invested in the region, and it’s great to see you building the team out of Abu Dhabi. I’m looking forward to what’s going to be a very hectic end of year for all of us here. Thank you again for joining us.
Andrej Majcen: Thank you, Karl. Thanks a lot.
