High-profile cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, opened up its professional trading platform to everyone, eliminating the requirement for its users to hold at least $10,000 in equity.

Bitfinex stated that this rule change comes in the wake of increased demand for their professional trading platform from traders. Considering the relatively high minimum equity requirement, the exchange is now targeting retail investors as well.

The platform had introduced the requirement in November 2018, effectively positioning itself as an exchange for professional traders. CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde stated that the exchange had spent the last six months working on how to make its offering available to a wider audience.

“For the last six months we have been working hard to ready our platform for a new wave of customer accounts and are now in a position to open Bitfinex to a wider audience. By dropping our minimum equity requirement, the only limits are now set by the traders themselves.”

Besides removing the $10,000 equity threshold, Bitfinex also revealed new improvements and features that have been implemented on the exchange:

An upgraded support center with automated responses for frequently asked questions

New KYC Portal for faster processing of customer identity documents with third-party tools

Santiment Token Information, which is an educational section for every cryptocurrency available on the platform.

As the cryptocurrency market is showing signs of a revival, Bitfinex is using the opportunity to start on-boarding retail traders as well and catch up with competitors Coinbase and Binance.

One prominent trend that is currently developing in the cryptocurrency space is the growing popularity of initial exchange offerings (IEO). The demand is mainly being driven by retail investors and it wouldn’t be unexpected to see Bitfinex offer a similar service in the near future.

What do you make of the rule change at Bitfinex? Will you start trading there, if you haven’t already? Share your opinion in the comments!