Omar Arnaout, chief executive of Polish retail broker XTB, says spot cryptocurrency trading could reshape the company’s revenue structure within two to three years, but only if Poland gets out of the way.
Speaking in an interview with Polish YouTube channel Comparic, Arnaout was unusually blunt about how lopsided XTB’s income currently is.
“Around 95%, maybe even more, of revenues are generated from CFD instruments,” he said, calling the situation a source of genuine frustration. His ambition: bring that figure down to roughly 70%, with crypto and equities filling the gap.
That’s not a small shift. It would mean building an entirely new revenue stream from scratch, one that doesn’t yet exist for XTB in any meaningful form in its home market.
The obstacle isn’t product development or client demand, it’s regulation. Poland remains one of the few EU member states that hasn’t implemented MiCA, the bloc’s digital asset framework, leaving XTB unable to offer spot cryptocurrency trading to Polish clients through a domestic license.
Arnaout didn’t hide his feelings about it. He said the situation “really hurts,” not just because of the revenue opportunity being missed, but because of what it means for XTB’s valuation. “I’m convinced we would have a completely different valuation on the stock exchange if we had greater revenue diversification,” he said.
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That’s a pointed comment from a CEO whose company trades on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. XTB shares hit an all-time high of nearly 92 PLN last month despite a weaker earnings quarter, driven largely by record client growth. But Arnaout is signaling that the stock could be worth considerably more if crypto revenues were already in the mix.
XTB shares. Source: Tradingview.com
XTB secured a MiCA license in Cyprus in December 2025, sidestepping the Polish legislative impasse by routing its spot crypto ambitions through its Cypriot entity. The plan is to test the product there before rolling it out across the EU. But it’s a workaround, not a solution, and Arnaout knows it.
XTB had previously written an open letter to Poland’s president urging him to sign the domestic crypto bill, warning that the absence of a local framework was pushing Polish investors toward offshore platforms outside national supervision.
Client Demand Is Already There, Revenue Isn’t
The commercial case for spot crypto at XTB isn’t theoretical. Arnaout said that every time something moves in the crypto market, XTB sees a surge in both new client signups and activity from existing users , even though the company only offers crypto CFDs, not actual digital assets.
“Inflows of new clients and the activity of existing clients is simply record-breaking,” he said, describing these moments as practically always hitting new highs.
That’s the second source of pain he described: watching high-intent crypto customers arrive on the platform while being unable to offer them the product they actually want. Competitors based in jurisdictions where MiCA has already been implemented can offer spot crypto to Polish clients, creating what Arnaout called an uneven playing field. “They have cryptocurrencies and offer cryptocurrencies to their clients, and we cannot do this,” he said.
The CFD-heavy revenue structure isn’t just a diversification problem, it’s a volatility problem. As FinanceMagnates,com reported in April 2025, CFD revenues accounted for over 97% of XTB’s income in Q1 2025, with the company’s profitability tightly linked to market conditions. In flat or range-bound markets, that model generates less. Arnaout acknowledged 2025 was exactly that kind of year, roughly flat on most major indices from April through September.
Equities Could Also Chip Away at CFD Dominance
Arnaout’s 70% target isn’t riding entirely on crypto. He also pointed to equities as a growing contributor, particularly as XTB’s client base continues to expand rapidly.
The broker added 864,000 new accounts in 2025, roughly equivalent to its entire pre-2020 history of client acquisition compressed into a single year. As reported earlier this month, Arnaout is targeting at least 1.2 million new clients in 2026, with ambitions to push toward 1.3 or 1.4 million. The logic is simple: a larger, more active client base trading stocks and ETFs means more non-CFD revenue, even without crypto.
That shift in client behavior is already visible. Only 7% of new XTB clients in 2025 chose CFDs as their first transaction, down from 80% in 2019. The new cohort is predominantly buying ETFs and stocks, lower-margin products but ones that build a stickier, longer-term client relationship. Over 80% of new clients in 2025 opened their first position in an ETF, an investment plan built on ETFs, or equities.
The revenue math hasn’t fully caught up with that behavioral shift yet. Equities and ETFs don’t currently generate enough per-user income to offset what CFDs bring in during volatile periods. Spot crypto, with its higher margins and round-the-clock trading, is the more obvious lever. Arnaout clearly sees it the same way, which is why, for now, regulatory gridlock in Warsaw remains his most pressing business problem.
