Cryptomania gives Austria its first unicorn

Cryptomania gives Austria its first unicorn

A lot of people are getting very rich on crypto, while the rest of us have to er, "have fun staying poor“.

But it's not just the OG HODLers who bought low and are now making silly money as bitcoin wobbles around $60k; it's also the trading firms charging fees on crypto transactions that anyone trading a traditional financial asset would consider pretty extortionate.

You might have heard that Coinbase, the US-based crypto wallet company, is planning to go public via a direct listing at a whopping valuation of $100bn. To put that into perspective, that's in the same ballpark as Chinese fintech collosus Ant Group's post-Chinese-crackdown $108bn valuation, as estimated by Bloomberg. Coinbase makes its money in a very simple way: charging 1.49 per cent for every single transaction you make “” meaning when you buy as well as when you sell “” unless you are one of their professional trader "Coinbase Pro“ clients.

Revolut, which you have probably also heard of, charges the same rate, and we understand it too is doing very well during this period of cryptomania, as it did in late 2017-early 2018 during the last period.

But unless you are particularly interested in this "space“, you might not