BBVA de España, faithful to its commitment to innovation, will launch crypto services. Indeed, it has around $ 840 billion in assets.
In fact, you are ready to enter the cryptocurrency trading and custody space.
According to a source, the project is being carried out from BBVA’s office in Switzerland. However, due to complex regulation by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the implementation of services would begin outside of Switzerland.
“From Switzerland, BBVA is launching its crypto service throughout Europe.”
He also added: “There are still some compliance hurdles so this will not be in December. But, I hope BBVA is active next month”.
Another source indicated: “The crypto service will likely go live around Christmas. There are still regulatory issues to solve”.
He also said: “The project has to go through several processes to get the green light and become a reality”.
BBVA will launch crypto services
Referring to whether they were building their solution, mainly to deal with tokenized securities, they emphasized that: “This is a cryptocurrency offering”.
In addition, they indicate that BBVA of Spain has integrated the same custody solution for cryptocurrencies, called SILO. The same one used by Gazprombank, the third largest bank in Russia.
To recall, about six months ago, BBVA began working on the integration of the SILO custody platform. Specifically, built by the central banking software provider Avaloq and the Swiss specialists METACO. Both companies are located in Switzerland.
In these circumstances, SILO provides financial institutions with a storage service.
For its part, METACO, the digital security infrastructure provider, is working on an institutional custody solution with London-based Standard Chartered.
If anything, Alex Manson, a business director at Standard Chartered, said the company had invested in METACO to improve the undeveloped market infrastructure surrounding cryptocurrencies.
The bank in the past
It should be noted that in January 2015, BBVA was one of the first banks to invest in Coinbase. In fact, through its venture capital fund BBVA Ventures.
In 2017, the previous president of BBVA, Francisco González, expressed that Blockchain technology was going to change the rules of the game in banking.
Incidentally, in April 2018, BBVA and the Spanish company Indra announced the completion of the first operation that facilitated the negotiation and signing of a corporate loan. Precisely, using Blockchain.
Basically, in July 2018, BBVA was one of the first financial institutions to combine public and private Blockchain in a live transaction.
Indeed, BBVA had to err on the side of caution and use a test net. Because banks in Europe were prohibited from having ETH, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency.
Similarly, in the execution process, the bank had to solve the lack of legal and regulatory clarity about whether it could have the necessary cryptocurrency to drive a transaction in Ethereum.
However, BBVA chose to comply with the recommendations of the European Banking Authority (EBA) and not use ETH.
At that time, Alicia Pertusa, BBVA’s managing director of corporate and investment banking, said: “According to the 2014 EBA recommendations, European banks are discouraged from owning, buying or selling cryptocurrencies”.
Finally, we believe that we are evolving in the way we view cryptocurrencies. So what do you think about BBVA of Spain launching crypto services? Leave us your opinion in the comment box.
I say goodbye with this phrase from Adriana Montero Palma: “Keep going despite everything”.
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