Berend Schoute, Director of Acquisition & Partnerships at Bitvavo, told me on the second day of Bitcoin Amsterdam that Germany is now the exchange’s number two country behind the Netherlands, and that it is growing faster than any other. I had asked him what comes next for the Amsterdam exchange. He answered in two parts, geography first and product second, and only the first came with detail.
The second half of our conversation was about home. Bitvavo surveys customers across Europe, its own and those of its competitors, to check how loyal they are, he said, and the Dutch come out as “one of the most loyal customer groups”. His explanation fits in a line: a simple product at a good price, and if you “don’t change too much”, they stick with you.
| What you need to know |
|---|
| 1Berend Schoute is Director of Acquisition & Partnerships at Bitvavo, the Amsterdam-based exchange that received its MiCA licence from the Dutch regulator AFM in June 2025. |
| 2Schoute says Germany is now Bitvavo's number two country behind the Netherlands and is growing faster than any other, with France and Spain "following suit". |
| 3He says Bitvavo's surveys and data show the Dutch as "one of the most loyal customer groups", and that the Dutch tax debate has top traders asking about business onboarding. |
| 4My read: abroad Bitvavo has to win customers over, while at home, by his account, its edge is giving loyal ones no reason to look elsewhere. |
The whole conversation is just over seven minutes long.
Germany first, France and Spain next
When I asked what is coming up, Schoute said he looks at it through two lenses, product and geography. He started with the map:
So we basically are expanding in Europe, so that’s from a geography point of view. Germany is now our number two country behind the Netherlands, growing faster than any other country, and we have a few other countries like France, Spain following suit as well.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
One licence carries that expansion. The Dutch AFM granted Bitvavo its MiCA licence in June 2025, and that single authorisation lets the exchange offer its services in every EU member state plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, as Bitvavo announced at the time. France’s financial markets authority lists the company on its public register of crypto-asset service providers. How many firms hold such a licence across Europe is something we have tracked in Dutch.
The product lens came with a date and very little else. He expects “the most exciting stuff” to “come mid next year”, which from a November conversation means the middle of 2027, and that was as far as he would go:
I can’t tell a lot about it but it is something that our users will be very excited about.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
It was the one question he chose to answer with less detail rather than more, and he said so plainly.
Read the thread on X
Building through the bear market
I asked how he keeps a team positive when the market goes through difficult times. Schoute treated the downturn as the moment to build:
Bear markets are always a great time to continue building out your product and building out your team. So that was the same for us. I think the foundations that we set in this bear market means that we can just continue going forever.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
He also sees the mood turning. In his reading the market has “improved a lot” since “mid-August roughly”, and the top traders Bitvavo brought to the event “basically acknowledge that”.
One thing Bitvavo built in that period is what it showed at its booth: margin trading. Schoute called it “almost like a hygiene factor for most of the exchanges”, a feature customers expect to find anywhere. What he stressed was that Bitvavo offers it “in our core app and in a very easy to use way”, and that the company has been building it out since a colleague of his last spoke to us. Bitvavo’s website describes the product as trading 20 assets, bitcoin, ether and solana among them, long or short with up to 10x leverage, and carries the company’s own warning that margin trading can cost you your entire initial capital.
Taxes, top traders and the banks
I asked where he sees the Netherlands going as the market matures. He began with tax:
There’s a lot of discussion internally in the Netherlands about taxes. I think they want to put some rules on crypto taxing. That’s keeping a lot of our top traders busy. They’re asking for business onboardings.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
Business onboarding means opening an account as a company rather than as a private person. The live debate on the tax side is the Box 3 overhaul. Under the latest version of the amendment, dated 3 November, financial instruments would move to a tax on realised gains on 1 January 2029, while direct crypto investments stay under the tax on unrealised gains for now; the cabinet expects to move them over from 2030, Taxence reported. Mauro Lorenzo Halve, chairman of the Dutch CASP association NVC, walked me through that split at the same event, and he named Bitvavo among the association’s members. We covered what the plan means for crypto earlier in Dutch.
Then he turned to the institutions:
But I would say that a lot of institutional players are adopting crypto and slowly also the Dutch banks are basically being more acceptive to Bitcoin and to other currencies.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
He put it carefully: slowly, and without naming a bank. For an exchange whose customers fund their accounts from a bank account, that direction of travel matters.
Why the Dutch stay, in his view
I put it to him that Dutch consumers are known for being nuchter, down to earth, and loyal to what has worked for them. He agreed they are “very direct”, and then went to Bitvavo’s own numbers. The company surveys customers across Europe, he said, both its own and the customer groups of its competitors:
They just like to have a simple product for a good price and a good offering in general and that’s what we have basically given to them and if you don’t change too much they will stick with you and that’s also what we see in our data. They’re one of the most loyal customer groups.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
He drew the conclusion himself: because of that loyalty, he said, most of Bitvavo’s competitors find it hard to get a foothold in the Netherlands.
Put the two halves of the interview side by side and they describe two different jobs. In Germany, France and Spain, Bitvavo is the newer name that has to persuade people to open another app. At home, by Schoute’s account, the work is keeping a simple product simple. If the loyalty he describes holds in other countries too, it is also what Bitvavo meets abroad, where somebody else is the familiar app.
Why his top traders came to the SugarFactory
Bitvavo had one of the biggest booths at the event, and I asked why it mattered to the company to be there:
Bitcoin Amsterdam, obviously, it’s one of the largest in the world, I would say. But next to that, it’s in our hometown. Bitvavo is headquartered here in Amsterdam.
Berend Schoute, Bitvavo
He mentioned “a very good relationship with the founders of this conference”, and the guests Bitvavo brought along: “a lot of our top traders”, invited to tell the team “how they like our product and what we can improve going forward”. Two things are worth following from here: the product he would only date to mid-2027, and how the final Box 3 rules land for the traders who are already asking about business accounts.
Read next
- All our Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026 interviews, collected on one page.
- Mauro Lorenzo Halve of the NVC on the Box 3 plan that is keeping Schoute’s top traders busy.
- Indy Rottier of Bybit EU on AI trading tools, another exchange’s view from the same floor.
- Michal Nydrle of Invity on building bitcoin financial services under a MiCA licence.
- Bitvavo is at bitvavo.com, on X and on LinkedIn. Berend Schoute is on LinkedIn.
I recorded the interview with Berend Schoute at Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026, at the SugarFactory in Halfweg, on 6 November 2026. Quotes are verbatim, with filler removed. Cryptofocus is a media partner of Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026; I moderated a panel there on 5 November and am the MC of the Orange Stage on 6 November. Nothing here is financial advice.
