Citing explosive growth in Europe, bitcoin payment processor BitPay announced Monday that they are opening a larger office in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The new office will serve as headquarters for the company’s European operations, and is located at Herengracht 458 (a 17th century building) in the Gouden Boch (Gold Bend) part of the city. Deutsche Bank has offices in the space.
In addition to the new digs, the company has made some new hires.
Timo Dijkstra will be serving as a Compliance Specialist. He was a Senior Compliance and Risk Consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Walter Drieënhuizen and Niels Kerstholt will also be coming aboard as sales associates, and Carla Jagger will be managing the office.
Explosive growth in Europe
BitPay is one of the fastest-growing companies in the bitcoin sector. This year alone, merchants in Europe have processed over 28 million euros worth of bitcoin payments. In the same time span last year, the amount was just 1.4 million euros. That’s a growth rate of 1900 percent year-over-year.
Highest adoption, according to BitPay, has been observed in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Around the world, BitPay now has about 75 employees working in 5 different offices: San Francisco, Atlanta, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, and St. Petersburg.
“In May when we first opened the office, we were adding about 200 merchants monthly, and for the month of August we added 1,100 new merchants in Europe,” said Moe Levin, Director of European Development at BitPay. “Europeans are familiar with multiple currencies and are at the forefront of mobile technology adoption, so it’s easy to see why bitcoin is popular and widely-used.”