Bitstamp is charging inactive clients a charge to cover expenses as the bitcoin market pulls down on trade volumes.
In a blog post published on Friday, the company said that the new inactivity charge will affect clients with balances of less than $200 who had not traded, deposited, or staked on its platform during the last year. The inactivity cost for such users would be 10 euros.
It will go into effect on August 1 and will not apply to users in the United States. Bitstamp said that the majority of its clients are not impacted by the Inactivity Fee. “Nobody likes fees (neither do we!). However, maintaining inactive accounts incurs a cost, and in order to continue delivering excellent services to all of our clients, we took the difficult choice to institute the Inactivity Fee.”
The majority of exchanges get revenue through fees on trading volumes, which have collapsed with the price of cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the year.
The Block data indicates that trading volumes have decreased from $2.2 trillion in May 2021 to roughly $622 billion in June.
Crypto exchanges, which have depended mainly on trading fees as their principal source of income, are seeking to diversify their company by expanding their revenue base.
For instance, Coinbase has been piloting a new subscription service called Coinbase One, while other exchanges like as Kraken have moved into staking.
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