Beijing-based bitcoin exchange provider OKCoin has announced its latest strategic bid to move beyond Asia’s markets and serve the global bitcoin community by announcing the planned launch of its new international exchange website.
The move will find the China-based company accepting USD deposits and processing USD withdrawals via OKCoin.com. OKCoin will also host servers for the new offering outside of China and provide English-language customer service.
Speaking to CoinDesk, OKCoin CTO Changpeng Zhao said:
“The international site will be skewed very heavily to international users in the user experience. The customer credibility – we need to establish that over time, but I think that’s going to come in a superior product.”
Zhao went on to say that the international site is going to be separate from the Chinese site, with separate order books. The company does not plan to register for money transmission licenses in the US immediately, meaning that the move finds OKCoin looking internationally, but not formally courting American customers.
The official unveiling took place during Changpeng Zhao’s speech at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Chicago today and follows the 20th June launch of the company’s algorithmic trading tools, a product that aims to help the company better target Wall Street investors.
International differences
Zhao said the two sites – OKCoin.cn and OKCoin.com – aim to satisfy the differing regional preferences of both groups of exchange users.
For example, Zhao noted that Western users prefer clean interfaces, those more comparable to Google, while China-based users, he said, favor more links on one page.
The former Blockchain head of development said:
“It’s those little things that actually matter, and we’re still trying to figure out how to best satisfy both worlds. At the moment, we don’t want to have two separate products, but later we may have different versions for different regions.”
He added that future products may account for regional trading preferences, noting that futures remain a popular product in China, while options are not as widely used.
China looks west
The Chicago conference played host to three notable Asia-based companies on Saturday, including OKCoin and Huobi, both of which had representatives speak as part of the event.
OKCoin CEO Star Xu and Huobi CEO Leon Li were both expected to lead these discussions, however, Li was replaced by Wendy Wang, while Xu was replaced by Zhao.
BitOcean, a China-based bitcoin ATM manufacturer that recently launched an initiative that will find it opening a Japan-based bitcoin exchange, also attended the event.
Yuan and dollar image via Shutterstock