Building a Bridge from Tradfi to Crypto | Armani Ferrante x Chain Catcher

In an exclusive interview with ChainCatcher, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante discusses his transition from an Apple engineer to a blockchain entrepreneur, driven by his fascination with Ethereum's potential. He highlights Backpack's commitment to compliance, securing licenses in Dubai, Japan, and Europe, aiming to become a regulated perpetual contract provider in Europe by Q1 2025. Ferrante also reflects on Backpack's resilience, notably after the FTX collapse, and its innovative ventures like the successful Mad Lads NFT series on Solana.

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"When we started the exchange, we did $60 billion in trading volume. We call it pre-season because the exchange was not fully built at that time; we only offered spot trading for Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. At that time, especially in the Chinese-speaking market, everyone was excited to see a new exchange after the FTX incident. Since then, we have done a lot of work and are finally ready to start from several major markets and connect to the largest capital market liquidity globally. The real opportunity is that cryptocurrency is the capital market native to the global internet, not just in China, but also in Japan, the U.S., Europe, and Africa, everywhere. That is the essence of cryptocurrency; it is borderless.

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March is when we truly begin. Now we have a complete beta testing plan, we have launched the new yield futures product, the margin system is also online, and all compliance infrastructure is in place. In the past two and a half weeks, just in the beta testing phase, we have completed about $2.4 billion in trading volume, and with the trading season approaching, we expect activity to grow significantly."

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Click here to read the full conversation.