OKX Doubles Down on Europe: Growth Through Regulation, Localization, and Product Expansion

OKX is making Europe one of its key growth markets. That was the core message from OKX Europe CEO Erald Ghoos, who used his appearance during Paris Blockchain Week to outline not only the company’s broader regional strategy — from expansion priorities to infrastructure and institutional adoption.

The main announcement was the launch of Xperbs, which Ghoos described as

“a five year dated future”

According to him, the product is designed to close the gap between offshore, unregulated venues with strong liquidity and regulated European platforms that often offer a weaker trading experience.

"What OKX did with the Xperbs is we are bridging that gap under a fully regulated exchange where we offer great liquidity,” he said.

The strategy is clear: bring back part of the trading volume that European users currently execute offshore. Ghoos noted that 95% of crypto derivatives trading volume in Europe now happens offshore, and argued that users are ready to come back onshore if they can get both safety and product quality.

“They want to make sure that they're trading on a regulated, secure environment and platform. But also they don't want to give up all the good liquidity, the product features”

For OKX, growth in Europe is also about local adaptation. Ghoos stressed the importance of integrating familiar local payment methods across countries, calling them a driver of trust:

“That instils trust with people. You don't want to use payment methods that you're not comfortable with”

Why Europe, and why now? The answer is MiCA.

Thanks to MICA, it's much more easier for global companies like ourselves to operate and to get access into Europe. The key mechanism is passporting which allows a license obtained in one country to be used across the EEA.

That said, OKX is not trying to scale evenly across the whole region at once. Despite regulatory harmonization, Europe remains complex in terms of language, localization, and user behavior. That is why the company is focusing first on priority markets: the Netherlands, France, Poland, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In effect, OKX’s approach is to go deep in the largest economies before expanding more broadly.

At the same time, Ghoos made clear that Europe’s regulatory environment remains heavy. Beyond MiCA, different business lines require additional licenses, and the overall compliance burden is significant.

“There are so many different types of regulations in Europe that makes it a very heavy burden to operate in Europe"

In his view, that pressure will drive major market consolidation.

“I see that around 80% roughly will not exist anymore in the next year, year and a half,”

He said it, referring to a large share of smaller local players that may struggle to absorb the new regulatory costs, and added carefully

“I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.”

He also drew attention to the institutional side of the story.

“What institutions need is they need to have regulatory clarity”

According to him, after securing its licenses, OKX saw

“a massive uptake in institutional interest,”

suggesting that the next phase of growth in Europe will come not only from retail traders, but increasingly from professional market participants as well.

The conclusion is straightforward: OKX sees Europe as one of its next major growth engines. But in this market, growth will likely belong only to those players that can combine regulation, localization, liquidity, and trust at scale.