Argentinian Exchange Bitex Migrates onto White Label Platform

About the Customer

Since the founding of Bitex in 2014 as an Argentinian exchange entity, the company has grown to service an extensive network in Latin America, with over $670M in transactions processed and over 34k lifetime registered users.

By providing tailor-made financial solutions, including liquidity services, international payment processing and crypto exchange operation, Bitex has connected more than 50 countries, operating as a registered/regulated entity in their primary markets and providing support for native currency in most.

Business Challenge

When Bitex was founded in 2014, the global crypto exchange landscape was still lurching through early formative stages worldwide in a post-Mt Gox industry. Co-founder Fran Buero observed an obvious market gap, with very little local service available in major LATAM markets at the time, “Having been an active participant in the Argentinian Bitcoin space since 2013 and contributing to several other projects aimed at improving the region’s inclusion with the global currency network, it was only natural to pursue exchange operation as a means to cater to these different countries and cultures, and expand their banking capabilities and access to money. Not all of the global population’s crypto needs are met by the Binance’s, Gemini’s, and CoinDesk’s of the world, which was certainly true then and is still very much a reality now.”

Fran expanded on regional socio-economic drivers in play, “Our motivation for service to the LATAM market is a humanitarian one. The founders are Argentinians, and in the last 30 years Argentina has gone through several major financial crises, which has forced citizens to hide their money and harbor a distrust of banks, as is the case in neighboring countries around South America. Ultimately, our mission is to protect the value of our exchange users’ money.”

After six years of successful operation on their own proprietary tech stack, Bitex realized that a strategic pivot would be necessary to keep up with scaling demands, “We reached a point where we were growing so rapidly that it was no longer possible to fulfill user expectations for exotic token pairs and sophisticated trading functionality,” explained Fran, “We needed to migrate to a more extensible technology platform to remain competitive in an ever-expanding market, especially when pitted against heavily resourced companies all battling for new LATAM market share.”

Solution

Bitex’s decision to outsource their exchange engine allowed the organization to allocate internal resources more-fully towards non-software aspects of the company like business development and onboarding of retail, corporate, and high net-worth individuals. This marked a critical strategic shift to support sustainable growth at Bitex, “We’re focused on generating activity on a business that’s already firmly in place, and with AlphaPoint driving R&D independently, our product can change organically in the future based on emerging market needs. We like the joint-venture aspect of our business relationship with AlphaPoint; when we have a ‘problem’ that needs solving and you provide a solution. Collectively, we confer on the needs of our customers, what we provide and what you provide, and this is the basis of a joint venture and truly a cornerstone for building a lasting operational approach based on business-driven grounds. We both want to make a profit, and we both put the customer in the center. We deliver the product effectively together.”

“As a founding principle, we continue to operate as a borderless exchange, acting as a neutral middleman service for cross-border payments. The exchange’s role for many is to convert from fiat currency to BTC, and then back to fiat again in order to facilitate these cross-border transactions,” remarked Fran Buero, “We are very happy with the decision to migrate onto AlphaPoint software because it’s made our product advance significantly, mainly building on the business foundation that we had worked to establish over the previous seven years. Now we can offer lots of new tokens, and keep up with the shifting demands of a diverse customer base, while focusing our efforts on business operations versus managing a team of developers and coders. It’s far superior to what we had previously in place and we are very, very happy.”