Markets
Flowdesk’s bet on New York expansion as crypto environment looked bleak in 2023 is now paying off
Guilhem Chaumont, CEO of market maker Flowdesk, is willing to follow his convictions even if the general outlook might go against his beliefs.
At the time, it was a move that went against the grain. A few months earlier, CoinDesk Published a Rare Editorial The columnist observed that conspiracy theories that the U.S. government was trying to kill cryptocurrency didn’t seem that far from reality. The editorial argued that the government was intentionally suppressing the industry through repressive regulatory enforcement measures and a lack of willingness to develop enforceable rules.
“The philosophy of the company has always been the same. We have a strong conviction about where the market is going,” Chaumont said in an interview this week. “Building a company, especially in the cryptocurrency space, is always about making contrarian bets and seeing what others haven’t seen. We’re not very sensitive to short-term macroeconomic events. That’s why we’ve always been very enthusiastic about the United States for innovation in the cryptocurrency space. It’s a country of innovation and a huge market for everyone.”
Increasing U.S. headcount in 2023, when the situation looked bleak, gave Flowdesk a first-mover advantage when the market recovered.
“We’re now gaining significant market share and our business is in a better position than ever: profitable with significant volume and revenue growth,” he said. “With the ETF approval earlier this year, we started seeing more positive news and thought, ‘Okay, our bet is probably going to pay off.’”
The situation may have improved considerably, but there is still work to be done, even though the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century (FIT21) Act – which was praised by some players in the sector as a step in the right direction – is being introduced in the Senate with bipartisan support.
For example, the market is becoming more complex when dealing with US counterparties due to multiple licenses, meaning there are still some operational limitations in the market.
Child care is another headache. Chaumont argued that the United States needs a simplified and globally harmonized regulatory framework for child care, which, if implemented well, could unlock enormous business potential.
Many problems could be solved by harmonization, and Chaumont cites the European Union’s MiCA regulation as a successful example. There are lessons to be learned from the EU’s approach, he said, which rules out the need for multiple licenses from each state. This is the situation that persists in the United States.
“In Europe, you don’t need to register multiple times,” he said. “Once you register in one country, you can operate throughout the region.”
A lot has happened in the United States over the past year, and who knows, maybe such harmonization will be on the agenda when Consensus 2025 comes around.
“If there had not been these bottlenecks and uncertainties, we could have grown three times faster, as we did in France,” Chaumont said.
UPDATE (July 17, 12:12 UTC): Adds layers of complexity to the United States in the ninth paragraph.