founder and exec chairman of @bitpanda

Joined November 2014
First time having @Starlink available on a @lufthansa flight. Game changer! I will be able to play WoW Forever in the sky.
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I don’t get why the French government isn’t declaring a state of emergency and deploying the military to clear the streets. The state has completely lost its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. These weak leaders are the reason why Europe is going downhill.
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J'ai passé un mois aux États-Unis à travailler sur l'IA de Finary. Le pays est loin d'être parfait, mais ici tout le monde construit, et l'énergie est palpable. En France, on saccage nos villes. Ce n'est pas un accident. C'est le résultat de 50 ans de décisions politiques désastreuses, à gauche comme à droite. Le pire : ceux qui se présentent aux élections sont aux manettes depuis des années. Croire qu'ils vont tout changer ? Une vaste blague. La cause racine : un État qui taxe tout, gère tout et vit à crédit depuis 1974. Résultat : 3 600 milliards d'euros de dette. 119 % du PIB. Un record. 21 millions de salariés du privé. En face : 6 millions d'agents publics, 3,3 millions de chômeurs, 17 millions de retraités. Je ne fais pas de politique. Mais sans changement, des jours sombres nous attendent. Pourtant, j'ai de l'espoir. Notre savoir-faire, notre culture, notre histoire : nous avons beaucoup à offrir et le monde entier aime la France. Nous, la majorité silencieuse qui bosse sans faire de bruit, qui finance ce cirque, devons nous faire entendre. C'est notre moment. D'ailleurs, oui nous allons analyser les programmes économiques des partis (chiffres à l'appui) sur la chaîne Finary. Je souhaite aussi faire passer un grand oral d'économie à chaque candidat. Vont-ils accepter? Rien n'est moins sûr !
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As a German living abroad and looking at things from outside the German media bubble, it’s tough to watch such a great nation hold itself back like this.
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Dem kann ich nur zustimmen. Der deutschen Talkshow-Landschaft und Politik täte mehr @thinkBTO sehr gut.
Der Auftritt von Daniel Stelter @thinkBTO bei Markus Lanz war, als würde man nach Monaten in der Wüste plötzlich eine wunderschöne Oase entdecken! Endlich wirtschaftliche Vernunft, rationale Argumente und ökonomischer Sachverstand im öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehen. So viel Klarheit und gesunder Menschenverstand wirkten auf mich völlig surreal. Wenn wirtschaftliche Vernunft im deutschen Fernsehen schon wie eine Sensation wirkt, zeigt das, wie weit wir uns mittlerweile von wirtschaftlicher Normalität entfernt haben. Danke, Herr Stelter! Für ein paar Stunden hatte man das Gefühl, der wirtschaftliche Verstand sei nach Deutschland zurückgekehrt. Wer seinem wirtschaftlichen Denken mal etwas Gutes tun möchte, sollte sich die Folge von Lanz ansehen. zdf.de/video/talk/markus-lan…
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I have to think about a bit more as this would have impact on a lot of things in the game, but I really like the idea.
#Blizzard, hear me out! Here’s a proposal for #WoWForever to solve WoW’s gold inflation problem permanently! Almost every version of WoW eventually runs into the same problem: the gold supply keeps growing without any hard monetary limit. Over time, this inevitably creates inflation. Gold loses purchasing power, prices rise, and new or returning players enter an economy where veteran players have accumulated wealth for years. There is a simpler solution: Give every server a hard, fixed gold supply. For example: 100 million gold total. Forever. Think of it as the server’s monetary base. Gold dropped by mobs would no longer be newly created. Instead, mobs would distribute gold from a global server pool. The amount of gold mobs drop would dynamically depend on how much gold is currently available in that pool: • Lots of gold in the pool → mobs drop more • Little gold in the pool → mobs drop less Gold spent by players flows back into this pool and can then be redistributed through gameplay. NPC purchases such as skills, professions, repairs, mounts, etc. would return 100% of the spent gold to the server pool. Trading systems like the Auction House could also recycle part of the circulating gold back into the pool through transaction fees. This creates permanent circulation instead of permanent monetary expansion. NPC prices should also be dynamic. If a large percentage of the total gold supply is being held by players and very little gold is actively circulating, prices for essential services like skills and professions should decrease. That prevents new players from being priced out simply because veteran players are sitting on large gold reserves. The game economy would continuously adapt to the purchasing power and availability of gold. Over the very long term, the general price level might gradually decline, potentially resulting in mild persistent deflation. But that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the game world itself dynamically adjusts to the purchasing power of gold. One possible consequence of persistent deflation is that players may initially hoard gold. Imagine someone accumulates a large amount of gold, stops playing for three years, and then returns. Because prices have fallen in the meantime, their old savings could suddenly have significantly more purchasing power. But this effect is naturally self-correcting. The moment that player starts using that increased purchasing power, the saved gold begins circulating again. They get the benefit of having saved, as they should, but once they spend it, that purchasing power is transferred to other players and gradually redistributed throughout the economy. In other words: hoarding can temporarily concentrate purchasing power, but spending automatically starts reversing that concentration. The important part is: Gold would finally become truly scarce. No endless monetary expansion. No inevitable long-term inflation. No need for increasingly absurd gold sinks every expansion. Just a closed monetary system where the same gold continuously circulates between players, NPCs, and the game world. For a version of WoW designed to exist forever, its currency should be designed to exist forever too. @Warcraft @Blizzard_Ent @Warcraft_DE
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Eric Demuth retweeted
🇪🇺 JUST IN: $234B Raiffeisen Bank International plans to bring crypto trading to its network banks across 11 European markets through Bitpanda. ct.com/news/raiffeisen-crypt…
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Eric Demuth retweeted
NEW: Raiffeisen Bank International partners with @Bitpanda to roll out crypto access across its 18M customer network in Central and Eastern Europe.
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founder mode is back 💪
gm. had a great first week as @Bitpanda_global co CEO. full founder mode. bitcoin up. wagmi
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Berlin is done. gg
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This.
A kid who knows how to raid in WoW is unironically a better hire than 99% of non gamers. They develop team skills, coordination, leadership, how to master the respect of 40 people, how to share loot, maintaining a raid schedule, showing up on time, clear direct communication, how to get along with unique personalities, creating and executing on strategies, failing and trying again (perseverance), delayed gratification, etc. Invaluable skills are developed during raiding that are transferrable to the real world.
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Today we announced that Bitpanda CEO @enzersdorfer will step down in Q1 2027, with my fellow Co-Founder @christiant5r becoming Co-CEO effective immediately. Lukas has played an important role in building a stronger and more diversified @Bitpanda_global, and I want to thank him for everything he has contributed over the years. For our next chapter, we want to put an even stronger focus on what has always been at the core of Bitpanda: technology, product and being relentlessly customer-centric. Christian knows this company inside out and is, without a doubt, one of the strongest tech minds in Europe. Having him back at the center of product and technology will be a huge asset for Bitpanda and our customers. We have operated with a Co-CEO structure for 11 out of 12 years in Bitpanda's history, so this is a setup we know very well. I’m looking forward to Lukas and Christian working closely together over the coming months and, even more, to the next chapter of Bitpanda. :)
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This man is very right. And the crazy part is the fact all these thing you mention are still just the tip of the iceberg. Becoming successful as an entrepreneur in Germany and Austria these days is like entering a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back while your competitors fight unrestricted.
For more than a day I have seen people quoting this post and saying how bad Germany is for entrepreneurs due to that. If your company fails because you had to sit through a notary session then you would have failed anyway. The actual problems with Germany are a lot worse and much deeper. Notaries are annoying sure. But the entire country and its system is built to kill enterpreneurship and discourage it at every point. Some other examples apart from the notaries: - Dealing with the cross-EU VAT situation the moment your company has more than 10k yearly revenue. (yes you heard it right making 10k in a year ... as a company). - Having to identify all users online (asking them for address/country), charge them different VAT depending on their country and follow the VAT changes in real time as they happen. - Absolutely zero help from the state. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Nichts. - Instead of help you are greeted with utter hostility and suspicion. - Dealing with the German tax system and getting audited multiple times in a 8 year period. Yes a tiny company of 3-4 people being audited multiple times because hey ... why not? Competing world-wide is not a hard enough task, let's make it impossible to function. - Social security and insurances. All your employees costs you roughly 20-25% more than their stated salaries. - If you are a company with more than 10 employees then good luck letting people go when you need to. - Completely random expenses every year such as the IHK expenses (chamber of commerce membership), some employee accident insurance that you must always have even if you have no offices etc. These are just some things that popped up in my head as I write this. There is a lot more and it's just sad. As a country, Germany is made to stop you from being successful. They are stuck in the past for everything and this is why the economy here is failing. And it won't get better anytime soon. Things will get a lot worse before they get better. As I see nothing happening to fix any of these. Instead somehow it's all the immigrant's fault and the far right is rising. /s Sorry for the late night rant
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fun fact: we raised €40m in our Series A in 2020 and paid over €40k purely in notary fees. + 5.5 hrs in person read-aloud session time aka scrolling through social media and answering emails
Met a German founder this week and asked him if all the stories one reads about the challenges of startups in Germany are exaggerated. "No, they're understated." Proceeded to describe spending a full day having a 90-page investment contract read to him (mandatory under German law; § 13 BeurkG) by a notary that then charged €30,000. That was for his first company. His second company, needless to say, was not incorporated in Germany.
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Oh, and btw: this is not a purely German phenomenon. The same bullshit happens in Austria. After our Series B, we decided to put a Swiss holding structure on top of our Bitpanda entities precisely because of this bureaucratic madness and these insane notary requirements. You simply can’t go back to international investors every few months and ask them for a notarized document sent by mail with a WET INK signature. Every international VC that has ever invested in Germany or Austria knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Met a German founder this week and asked him if all the stories one reads about the challenges of startups in Germany are exaggerated. "No, they're understated." Proceeded to describe spending a full day having a 90-page investment contract read to him (mandatory under German law; § 13 BeurkG) by a notary that then charged €30,000. That was for his first company. His second company, needless to say, was not incorporated in Germany.
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Eric Demuth retweeted
Met a German founder this week and asked him if all the stories one reads about the challenges of startups in Germany are exaggerated. "No, they're understated." Proceeded to describe spending a full day having a 90-page investment contract read to him (mandatory under German law; § 13 BeurkG) by a notary that then charged €30,000. That was for his first company. His second company, needless to say, was not incorporated in Germany.
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In einem Land, in dem fast jede Woche Ulrike Herrmann (TAZ) und Anja Kohl (Börse vor Acht) als „Wirtschaftsexperten“ in Talkshows sitzen, muss man sich über den zunehmenden ökonomischen Analphabetismus in Deutschland wirklich nicht wundern.
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Eric Demuth retweeted
Ro, “in your scenario, the founder could sell to pay a one time 5 percent tax or the state could sell it if he defaults on the loan” Ro, this is the biggest fuck you in the history of entrepreneurship. Ever. Creating jobs but don’t have cash. Fuck you Can’t sell shares, we will sell it for you, to whoever. Fuck you. Creating jobs. Paying great wages instead of taking cash out yourself. Fuck you Reinvesting into your company and community. Fuck You. Don’t you know that Jensen, and Lisa Su, and people who have vast amounts of liquidity already have no problem with it. Fuck You There is a huge difference between someone with liquidity , running a huge public company, and someone who has dedicated every minute of who knows how many years, to building a company, to finally have a dream financing come true , only to be insulted by a politician. “We will sell your shares for you “ GTFO
Replying to @mcuban
Mark, most of the 250 billionaires in California DO NOT have this liquidity issue. They have public stock. In your scenario, the founder could sell to pay a one time 5 percent tax or the state could sell it if he defaults on the loan. Ask Jensen, Lisa Su, Sundar if they plan to leave California if this ballot initiative passes. Btw 85 percent of the nation's VC money came in Q1 2026 to California. I love your passion. I respect your intellect and ability to get things done. Why not put this energy in figuring out how we bring capital and high paying jobs to every community in America? Why not put it towards figuring out the policy that expands childcare or healthcare (as you are working on reducing drug pricing)? Of all the things in America, aren't those more pressing issues than a one time 5 percent tax on 250 billionaires to pay for healthcare for poor kids and families in California?
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