- 29 December 2021
- Posted by: Cryptovalues
- Category: Central Banks, Cryptovalues News, World News
A few months ago, Germany decided to take the podium for openness in Europe with respect to the world of digital currencies.
Supported by Bafin, the German supervisory authority similar to Consob, which urges blockchain innovation in the country while preaching the utmost caution regarding digital investments.
In July, progress was made in considering Bitcoin as an investment not only for “sophisticated” and risk-prone clients, and a law was passed allowing German institutional funds to hold up to 20% of their assets in crypto.
Spezialfond, or “special funds” are only accessible to institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance funds, which manage assets worth around 1,800 billion euros.
But the will to look to the future has not stopped and now the German Sparkasse, similar in structure to the Italian Savings Banks, should offer from the first months of 2022 trading and purchasing services for Bitcoin and Ethereum and this through the current accounts of customers.
The project is expected to gain approval from the Sparkassen committees early next year, in order to allow for the subsequent launch of an in-house cryptocurrency wallet and exchange.
The news, if confirmed, could be disruptive because these banks have over 50 million customers and are considered the core banking for Europe’s leading economy.
This would have two advantages, the first being the ability to benefit from transaction negotiation fees and the second being the ability to bring their customers closer to digital currencies by opening up new services.
