Carving our Way to a Brighter Future: The State of NBX Now and Future Plans
It’s been a wild year so far.
Where we are now
First, and foremost, there’s the question that’s on the tip of many of your tongues: what were we focused on for the past two years?
From the get-go, we’ve always been focused on building our own exchange from scratch, instead of going with a bespoke (white-label) solution. This allowed us to deeply understand the ins and outs of every line of code that went into the NBX Exchange and therefore, maximize both our security and our usability throughout the building process. As a trade-off, however, it’s taken considerably more time and effort to get everything right than it would if we just added our own twist to an existing solution.
“One of the most important things for us from the start, was to have the intellectual property rights on the product we built. Exchanges that use white-label solutions basically do not own their own products and therefore are not really responsible for their code. We, instead, have full control over ours. Because of this, we can easily build on top of our initial product and consistently propose new features to our clients which would be nearly impossible if we’d choose not to create our own exchange from scratch.” — Stig Aleksander Kjos-Mathisen, Managing Director and Co-Founder @ NBX
If you’re interested in digging deeper into our decision making in this respect, check out our co-founder, Stig Aleksander-Kjos Mathisen’s interview with Christopher from the BYNN podcast (in Norwegian).
Since our public launch in April, we’ve also crossed several other significant milestones. These include:
- Reaching over 5000 registered users. On average, up to 6–10 users join the NBX Exchange daily and that number will only continue to grow over time. Additionally, our number of regular clients is growing monthly as well, which strengthens our commitment to and excitement for Norwegians and the world-at-large to join with us and experience the world of digital assets.
- Consistent increase in our trading volume. We’ve averaged $300,000 a month, although September 16th marked our all-time high at nearly 13 bitcoins in volume. This consistent growth in trading volume has helped us to attract valuable new corporate clients and potential investors to assist us in our continued development. Corporate clients are welcome to check out this article about how to create a corporate account on NBX exchange.
- Considerable recognition through international industry media. Check out for example, Blockonomi’s review of NBX or iHodl’s amusing nod to our Knowledge Base with the title “The Best Exchanges for Bad Traders to Get Better”. Our Knowledge Base is very friendly for the newcomers. This is only the tip of the iceberg for our efforts to start gaining media recognition as we’re always working to connect with new media partners.
- Knowledge Base. Sitting as part of the foundation of our efforts to build trust in the Nordics and beyond is our Knowledge Base. Though the cryptocurrency industry has evolved considerably since the Wild West of 2017, scammers still abound and newcomers still don’t quite have a comfortable place to learn all of the technical concepts they need to know to be successful in crypto. Because of this, we’ve built a considerable library of content that’s newcomer friendly on all sorts of topics including ideal security practices, trading, and Crypto 101, which assume zero prior knowledge. You can start by learning how to understand a trading interface, then dig into what Bitcoin is at the most basic level, or vice-versa! As you take your journey through our Knowledge Base, rest assured that it will always be a living resource that’s updated regularly.
- Laser-focused on becoming the leading exchange in the Nordics. We’re putting most of our efforts into establishing even more of a strong presence in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but not that we’ve left out the rest of the world. In fact, even now, we already have clients all over the world, including the United States, the UK, France, Germany, and the rest of Europe, outside of the Nordics.
With the above information in mind, you now know the current state of NBX.
Where we are heading
“Money and value will flow as easily across platforms as information flows today.”
The above quote drives all of our efforts here at NBX as we consistently work to stay ahead of the curve. Below, you’ll find out exactly what features we’re working on to help us do that.
- Quick Buy. To kick things off, we found out that a solid amount of our clients are into stacking sats and “hodling” cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, as opposed to trading. With this in mind, we’ve begun work on our “Quick Buy” feature, which will be the most comfortable way to buy Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies supported on the NBX exchange, with just a few clicks and no interaction with our trading interface.
- Enhanced Custodianship. As we made clear in our last post, “security is at the core of everything we do.” Two key features coming down the pipeline that will help us to keep that practice constant are insurance for all crypto funds as well as using the Ledger Vault to improve wallet management according to the highest security and operational standards. More information to be released.
- Future Listings. The central question on every cryptocurrency investor or trader’s mind when they signup with a cryptocurrency exchange is: what assets will be listed down the road? At NBX, we have a unique approach to listings and are committed to listing cryptocurrency assets that meet true real-world needs. We’re currently looking into tokenized assets that are tied to the gold and power industries which have the aim of using the value of the blockchain to redefine their business models, while giving both retail and corporate investors new ways to invest in the cryptocurrency space.
- New Fiat Currencies. Being the leading cryptocurrency exchange in the Nordics means supporting all of the currencies that our current and prospective clients may use. That means that in addition to supporting Norwegian Krone deposits and withdrawals, we’re working on support for Swedish Krona, Danish Krone and the Euro as the goal. Important to note that any client can already deposit and withdraw fiat from any of our 190 supported countries around the world. For now, it’s just necessary that it’s converted to and from NOK until our new fiat solutions are implemented.
- Auto-Deposits and Withdrawals. In today’s fast-paced world, especially in the cryptocurrency space, it helps to be able to put your investments on autopilot. With that in mind, we’re working on auto-deposits and withdrawals. Once these features are implemented the waiting time for depositing and withdrawing on our platform will be significantly reduced.
- E-Money License. Overarching all of our efforts is our work towards obtaining a true “E-Money License.” We’ll legally be able to expand our efforts into payment services involving cryptocurrencies. This, in turn, will truly signal that the sky’s the limit for the future of the NBX offering since we’ll be in a position to disrupt today’s legacy payment systems through offering far lower fees and significantly faster settlement times. Central to our efforts in doing so is the development of our own dedicated stablecoin, NOK Coin, which will serve as the payment medium for our future payment services wing. We began our efforts towards obtaining an E-Money License in Norway with the approval of the NBX board, this year, and the project’s slated to be completed in 2021.
You now know the full state of affairs at NBX. With that knowledge, we hope that you’ll decide to sign up and take the plunge with us as we continue to pave our way to being a leading, forward-thinking cryptocurrency exchange.
