Bitstamp launched in 2011 and outlasted Mt. Gox, FTX and a dozen smaller collapses before Robinhood bought it for about $200 million in 2025. We opened an account, traded through its updated fee schedule and checked what changed under new ownership.
Bitstamp opened in 2011, which makes it older than Coinbase's public listing, older than Binance, and old enough to have watched Mt. Gox, FTX and a long list of smaller exchanges collapse around it. In June 2025, Robinhood closed a roughly $200 million acquisition of the company. We opened an account, ran trades through the current fee schedule and checked what, if anything, actually changed.
A history that is mostly about surviving
Bitstamp's biggest security incident was a 2015 breach of a small operational hot wallet, and the exchange has run without a comparable exchange-side hack since. That is a genuinely rare record in an industry where Bybit, KuCoin and Bitfinex have all absorbed nine or ten-figure losses in the years since. Longevity alone does not prove anything about the future, but a fourteen-year run without a repeat incident is a data point competitors with flashier apps cannot match.
Bitstamp also holds licenses across multiple jurisdictions, including registrations that predate the current wave of exchanges scrambling to meet MiCA requirements in the EU. That regulatory head start is part of why Robinhood picked Bitstamp specifically rather than building EU crypto infrastructure from nothing: acquiring an incumbent with existing licenses is faster than applying for new ones market by market.
The fee schedule rewards volume, not casual trades
Bitstamp updated its unified fee schedule effective 1 September 2026. Trades under $1,000 of 30-day volume pay nothing at all, which is a real perk for someone making a single small purchase. Above that floor, fees climb to 0.30% maker and 0.40% taker up to $10,000 in volume, then step down through 0.20%/0.30% up to $100,000 and 0.10%/0.20% up to $500,000, falling toward zero maker fees only at the highest tiers.
