Bitvavo Banks on Confluent to Boost Its Real-Time Data Streaming and Realize Robust Data Governance

Trading Smarter: Bitvavo Secures Data Integrity and Governance with Confluent

Bitvavo is a leading European cryptocurrency exchange that seeks to bridge the gap between traditional currencies and digital assets by offering transparent fees, a wide range of assets, and an easy-to-use platform. With the functionality of a trading platform, the low fees of a digital asset exchange, and robust compliance and security protocols, Bitvavo’s mission is to contribute to the rise of the digital economy.

Founded in 2018, Bitvavo has grown rapidly, offering users secure and efficient access to cryptocurrency trading and therefore need to scale its data and security management accordingly.. 

"As we scaled our operations, we realized that managing data governance and providing real-time analytics were becoming more complex. We needed a platform that could handle large-scale data streams efficiently while maintaining the highest security standards," said Marcos Maia, Senior Staff Engineer.

Unleashing the Flow of Real-Time Data Streaming 

Reaching up to €1.5 billion in trading volume per day across its platform, Bitvavo's business is reliant on real-time transactions and precise data management. As the company scaled its services and their customer base grew to over 1.5 million, the need to process data efficiently and securely became more critical. Their systems relied heavily on a robust data infrastructure, but the complexities of managing data across multiple domains, implementing strict encryption standards, and maintaining regulatory compliance put a strain on the platform’s performance.

The core challenge the team faced was the ability to process real-time data streams, while ensuring that each domain maintained its own encryption and data governance policies. This required a flexible and scalable system that could handle diverse data types across multiple applications. Self-managing an open-source Apache Kafka® system proved difficult in this complex environment.

“Kafka is an incredible tool, but managing it ourselves became increasingly difficult. From patching at the OS level to ensuring data security and scaling, it was a constant challenge,” said Maia.

Bitvavo Unlocks Seamless Data Governance at Scale

To meet these growing demands, Bitvavo turned to Confluent’s fully managed Kafka platform. Confluent’s cloud-native architecture allowed Bitvavo to scale quickly and efficiently, while ensuring the security and integrity of their data. By migrating to Confluent, Bitvavo was able to focus on building their business rather than constantly managing infrastructure.

Confluent’s solution enabled Bitvavo to implement event-driven architecture and real-time data processing across their platform. The company integrated Confluent with its existing data systems to handle everything from processing trading data in real-time to ensuring that encryption standards were upheld across different domains. The platform’s robust data governance tools and features like Schema Registry and stream processing empowered Bitvavo to implement the strict data policies they required.

“Confluent made it possible to manage all our data flows without the burden of maintaining complex infrastructure. It gave us the flexibility to scale and the security to comply with regulatory standards. Our data processing is now faster, more secure, and much more reliable,” said Maia.

Specific features like Confluent’s real-time streaming capabilities, built-in data governance, and the ability to manage encryption at both the application and infrastructure levels helped Bitvavo meet both business and regulatory requirements.

Securing the Vault and Meeting the Market at Scale 

Since adopting Confluent, Bitvavo has seen significant improvements in both operational efficiency and customer experience. With Confluent's fully managed Kafka solution, Bitvavo’s ability to stream data in real-time has significantly improved. This has enabled the company to provide users with trading data in milliseconds without delays, including updates for trading charts, whereas previously this could take up to 3 minutes.

“We are now able to provide real-time candle charts and other market data to customers within seconds of a trade being executed. Previously, this was much more challenging, and it involved maintaining thousands of tables and systems for such tasks. Now, we can handle this much more efficiently,” said Maia.

The company’s data governance has also significantly improved. By leveraging Confluent's advanced features, Bitvavo ensured that encryption keys remained securely managed and that different domains respected data contracts across the organization. This has not only enhanced security but also allowed the company to remain compliant with (data protection) regulations, such as GDPR and DORA.

Furthermore, Bitvavo is now better positioned to handle market spikes. With Confluent’s auto-scaling capabilities, Bitvavo’s infrastructure automatically scales to meet increased demand, ensuring that trading operations remain smooth and responsive even in times of rapid market growth.

The use of Confluent has led to operational efficiencies that help Bitvavo stay competitive in the fast-moving cryptocurrency market. The system now handles millions of transactions per second, and Bitvavo is able to continue growing its user base while maintaining the high performance and reliability that its customers expect.

What’s Next? Bitvavo Powers Peak Trading with Confluent

Looking to the future, Bitvavo plans to expand its use of Confluent’s platform to include even more data-driven use cases, whilst providing the most relevant product and services to customers in a responsible and safe way. The company is exploring the possibility of incorporating more real-time analytics and leveraging machine learning models to predict market trends. Additionally, Bitvavo is looking to automate further aspects of its infrastructure and data management processes, with Confluent playing a central role in those plans.

“We are excited to continue using Confluent to scale our infrastructure and build even more real-time capabilities. As we expand, we know that Confluent will be key to supporting our growth and enabling us to remain at the cutting edge of the cryptocurrency industry,” said Maia.