Chief operating officer for EMEA David Nolan told the Sunday Independent that the company is recruiting several roles with an initial eight or nine people on the team.
“We’re just building out the team and finalising the actual European platform.
“We have the American one up and running but we need to tailor it for European regulatory requirements, and we hope to have the platform live in October,” Nolan said.
“We need to find the right candidates to fill some of the senior roles, which takes time. Between building out the staff, completing the platform and finalising our products, that’s where we are at the moment.”
It will be hiring Irish-based staff as well as remote recruits.
The Irish subsidiary, Pionew Ireland, recently secured approval from the Central Bank of Ireland as a virtual asset service provider (VASP), which allows it to operate cryptocucrency services here.
The company has operated under the brands Pionex and Pionew in different regions, but Nolan said the company will be unveiling a “global rebrand” of the entities soon to bring these brands under one umbrella.
Pionex allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like much of its competitors and uses AI bots to assist users with their trading.
“We have the AI, the bot technology, that we have running and available for free for people to use – you can see it on the US website,” Nolan said. “That’s the prime feature we will bring into the market, along with spot [trading] and standard stuff, but we’ll certainly try to mimic as best we can the numbers that we have on the US platform in Europe.”
As it stands, companies need to acquire approvals such as the Irish VASP licence in multiple countries in order to operate and market their digital asset services in the country. Pionex also has such an approval in Lithuania and is pursuing one in Italy, Nolan added.
The European regulatory environment is about to undergo further change soon, with the passing of the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation that will introduce a bloc-wide regime for licensing and passporting, akin to traditional financial services.
Pionex joins a slew of other international crypto companies with operations in Ireland. Nolan previously headed up the European operations at Kraken, another crypto exchange with a presence in Ireland.
Kraken and several other major crypto firms such as Coinbase cut thousands of jobs recently in response to a weakening tech sector and a ‘crypto winter’ where digital currency prices plummeted.
Nolan said that this means there are potentially more candidates with crypto experience on the market.
“Initially we put out the feelers for these roles towards the end of last year and we got a huge number of applicants. We then put it on hold until we had a better understanding of when we were getting our VASP,” he said.
“Because of the people that were leaving Kraken in huge numbers and the likes of Binance more recently, and because we’re a remote first company, we’re getting a lot of very good applicants.”
