Bitpanda, Pantos and BEST: AMA summary with Bitpanda CEO Paul Klanschek

It’s been a few months since we announced the Bitpanda Global Exchange and the Bitpanda Ecosystem Token (BEST). In that time, we have been very busy attending events across the world and working towards our vision of breaking down the barriers to investing.

Naturally, our community always has a lot of questions, which is why our founders have pledged to hold an AMA session every two months - the most recent one being on the 14th of November.

If you weren’t able to take part then no problem, you can read over everything that happened in the thread on reddit. For those who want a more condensed version of the AMA, we have picked some of the more interesting questions and will provide the answers below.

Questions about Bitpanda and the Global Exchange

Question: What are the developments in establishing more volume on the Exchange since the last AMA session?

Answer: We have hired more market makers and have improved the API and website functionality immensely. We have hired new staff (from within the industry) specifically for sales and business development for the Global Exchange. The marketing efforts will be completely restructured to focus more on the target audience that we identified. There is still a long way to go but the internal roadmap we created for the next 6-12 months looks very promising.


Question: Any plans to tokenise other assets (apart from precious metals) in 2020?

Answer: Yes. If regulatorily possible.


Question: What upcoming product are you most excited about?

Answer: We never announce things before they are ready so I have to be cryptic here but if I have to answer - our first physical product!


Question: Will the first projects on the Launchpad be crypto-focussed or are other assets going to be considered? Also, will they be local (from the DACH region) or international?

Answer: We want to offer products on the launchpad that add something valuable to our investors at Bitpanda so we will be very picky with our first projects. We already received many requests but the majority do not meet our standards. These are not specifically from the DACH region but I imagine some will be, as our headquarters are here in Vienna.


Question: What is Bitpanda’s plan to gain more awareness in its home territory of the DACH region?

Answer: We will be updating our marketing plan as well as our blog very soon.


Question: When will you list a stablecoin on the Global Exchange? (example USDT - EUR).

Answer: We are prioritising volume and user growth on the Exchange before we add new markets (the exception would be a market that brings in new users!)

Questions about Pantos

Question: What is the strategy for listing Pantos and BEST on other exchanges? Are you pushing this or are you reluctant?

Answer: We are pretty reluctant to pay for listings. We have many offers for incredible amounts of money but this is not our style. When we do something, we take time to make sure it’s the right decision. I am generally against buying listings at all because it just siphons away money that can be spent on the product. I know that my opinion is not shared by everyone but right now I think Pantos has more money than it started with. This is because we want to preserve as many resources as possible to make Pantos a technological success!


Question: What's next for Pantos, when will we see an updated roadmap?

Answer: The roadmap will be updated at the end of the month. We will release this alongside the next Pantos whitepaper.


Questions: Pantos is a good project but people don’t understand it. Are there any plans to better explain the initial ideas and concepts to people?

Answer: We will try to explain everything as well as possible with each update. With each release, we collect feedback and try to implement it into the next update.


Question: I know this question comes up a lot but what about Pantos marketing?

Answer: We’ve never been the company that markets an unfinished project. However, there will be an update regarding our marketing plans as we are changing the approach and doing some restructuring!


Question: What is the role of the advisors and partners in the Pantos project? Are there any plans to use Pantos on their platforms? For example, Waves and Komodo have their own DEX exchanges.

Answer: The partners and advisors are used by Bitpanda to get feedback and insight into the project. We will also prioritise the launch of the final product on their blockchains and they will give us as much help as we need to accomplish that!

Questions about BEST

Question: Are you happy with how BEST is being used so far and can you tell us how many BEST have been used to pay since the ‘fee-paying’ feature was introduced at the end of October 2019?

Answer: Personally, I am very happy with how many people are using BEST for fees. We started in the first days with usage of below 10%, both in the number of orders and the number of fees paid. Since then, there has been a clear increase in the percentage of fees paid and the daily average is on track to be 20%. We will stick to our policy of not reporting the exact number of BEST used and percentage as it would be trivial to calculate the total amount of fees we collect monthly and we want to keep this number private. You can read about how much BEST is being used right here in our BEST Recap.

Question: How will you keep the price stable when demand increases/the price rises? I mean that besides the internal minimum value, is there a maximum value planned? Or how do you ensure that BEST does not become as speculative as BTC for example?

Answer: BEST has a very cool dynamic because as the fee usage increases, there is a very stable demand for the token. I expect the token to trade with less volatility than Bitcoin in the long term.

I do think that certain digital assets are an amazing opportunity but as always - digital assets are high risk investments. If a user doesn't really understand the nature of volatile assets then there is a big potential to make bad decisions when investing!

Stay tuned for future AMAs!

Everyone at Bitpanda understands the value of an engaged and active community. This is why we’re putting so much effort into community building and establishing a healthy, trustworthy relationship with you - the people who make Bitpanda what it is!

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and subscribe to the subreddit so you don’t miss the next of our bi-monthly AMAs!