XP Inc. is Brazil’s largest investment broker by market value and has started offering their customers Bitcoin trading services on August 15th, 2022. The new digital assets trading platform will be known as XTAGE and was developed in partnership with Nasdaq. ISTOE, a Brazilian publication, reported that the platform’s 3.6 million users will now be able to buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin.

The platform is currently only able to support up to 500,000 of their 3.6 million users and XTAGE is working on having over 200,000 active users by the end of the year. The company added in their statement that XTAGE has the potential to scale up to one million users.

Executive Vice President and Head of Market Technology Infrastructure at Nasdaq Roland Chai explained that in order to offer new asset classes as they develop and grow, XP will be able to scale its platform reliably with Nasdaq’s strong and adaptable infrastructure technology. Nasdaq’s tools are also built to meet market demands as well as present and future regulatory structures.

The XTAGE platform was first released in May of this year as a pilot for employees so that the platform may be evaluated and tested before launch. The option to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are integrated within XP’s app so that users are able to interact with an interface they are already familiar with.

Director of Financial Products at XP Lucas Rabechini is optimistic for the company’s future by emphasizing that “In the medium and long term, the potential is enormous, considering that we currently have more than 3.6 million customers on the XP platform.”

According to an internal XP survey from a few months ago, more than 60% of its customers are interested in purchasing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Additionally, 80% of those same customers are already investing in these assets outside of the XP platform and said they are interested in using an XP-designed trading platform.

Customers who want to use XTAGE will have a wallet that can store their Bitcoin, but will not have the option to move funds to another wallet. The transfer feature is planned to be available for XP customers at a later time.

Additionally, the majority of XP’s Bitcoin and cryptocurrency assets will be held in cold storage while BitGo will act as their custodial partner. Rabechini added that this storage method will boost the platform’s security.

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