By Riley Kaminer

Few innovators have been as deeply entrenched in the South Florida tech world for as long as TradeStation CEO John Bartleman. The Plantation-based company currently has 300 full-time employees in South Florida alone.

While only about 5% of fintech business today is crypto-related, TradeStation has doubled down on this rapidly growing space. Last month, he made waves by commissioning a £3,000 charging bull statue at Bitcoin 2022. The online securities and futures brokerage firm also made headlines recently for allowing United Way of Broward to accept donations using cryptocurrencies (Mayor of Broward, Udine making first crypto donation).

In an interview with Refresh Miami, Bartleman discusses TradeStation’s past, present, and future, Broward’s role in South Florida’s tech scene, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has TradeStation grown since you joined the company 23 years ago?

When I joined TradeStation, we were shipping floppies and only moving to CDs, which was a big step forward. We acquired a Dallas-based company that had an online web distribution model and took our product online. We also acquired an online broker here in South Florida and really changed our business model. We were a publicly traded company at the time and transitioned from selling software to being a broker.

My team had to figure out how to link our software to a brokerage firm and have direct connectivity to trading stocks, stock options and futures. We developed this capability during the 2000s.

In 2011, Monex Group in Japan bought TradeStation, taking us private. [The group is now planning to bring TradeStation public via SPAC.] What they liked about us was that we were an award-winning software platform with a differentiated product in the market. In the end, we were very successful in launching this product in Japan.

In 2016, I became Group President and began to take TradeStation in a new direction, expanding beyond the professional day traders and institutional clients we had. We began to reposition the company, creating more web and mobile technologies that are more user-friendly for younger audiences.

Then we decided to enter the crypto space. From 2017 to 2019, we developed our first product and went to market with a self-contained crypto web and mobile interface with five cryptos to start with. We do crypto lending, which allows us to pay our clients interest on their crypto balances as an added feature to having a TradeStation Crypto account.

Now we’re working on some really cool stuff. The first is that we are going to launch our fully integrated crypto into the multi-asset web platform that we have. We plan to have our mobile app with all asset classes, including crypto, in a new simplified version of the software later in the fall. In June, we will launch the next eight cryptos that we will support.

We also worked on an API. Over the past year and a half, we have integrated around 80 fintech platforms with a community of 35 million active monthly users.

What major crypto trends do you find most interesting?

The next five years will see many changes. I’m very bullish on a lot of the technology that’s happening. The problem is that I think we are in a bubble, with extreme valuations and rising interest rates. But I would like to see some of the strongest projects take root and grow.

I’m a big fan of the metaverse. We’re friends with the Magic Leap guys and want to do more events with them to get the energy flowing around that. I was just talking with their CEO about what these virtual worlds look like and how we meet and work in this space. He’s getting there, but he still needs a lot of work. We will experiment, but I think there is absolutely a future here.

I love NFTs and I can really see the application of some NFTs there. I think this is a major trend, especially when you think of collectibles or private securities that are securitized and integrated into the blockchain. In general, we are seeing a major evolution of blockchain technology infrastructure and its integration into legacy systems as younger generations push for things like round-the-clock trading.

We are also seeing an evolution of futures, creating event-based products to trade. I say “trade” and not investment, because it sounds a bit more like gambling: for example, what will the temperature be in New York tomorrow.

How do you handle crypto-related compliance issues?

Our attorneys work with state regulators and the SEC to answer all of their questions. In all areas of crypto, the SEC really wants to know about everything you do because it’s new. They want to know how the regulations are going. We continue to partner with them as this evolves. So it’s more about education and giving them whatever information they ask for.

What is TradeStation’s key to success when it comes to customer satisfaction?

You have to listen to your customers. We have a very close relationship with our customers, which allows us to understand their needs. The hardest part is that we are multi-asset and growing beyond just being an active professional trader. So it’s always about giving and accepting to deliver what customers are looking for and where we can go strategically. It is a difficult balancing act. Some platforms that have evolved very quickly have learned this the hard way.

What role does or can Broward County play in the larger South Florida tech ecosystem?

We’d like Broward to be the face of South Florida tech, just like Miami has become. We need flagship conferences like Miami in April or Permissionless in West Palm Beach. We need to get up here in Broward and make some noise, you know, and even create the ecosystem of what they did.

It’s great to see the energy of events in Miami, with hundreds of young people coming together and networking. But part of the problem with living in Miami is real estate. These young people might not be able to afford housing costs in Miami. But maybe Broward or Palm Beach is a more affordable alternative, much like Brooklyn was to New York. We are ready to do everything we can to foster this and make it happen.

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