The hype about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is huge. Now the savings banks are examining whether and how they can give their customers access. But nothing has been decided yet.
Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – Germany’s savings banks could enable their customers to trade in crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether in the future. A team at the IT service provider S-Payment is currently working on a concept for such a service in a pilot project.
The German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) confirmed information on Monday that had previously been published by “Capital”, “finanz-szene.de” and “Finance Forward”.
“The interest in crypto assets is enormous, the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe also sees it,” said a DSGV spokesman. “At S-Payment, the subsidiary of the DSV Group that specializes in payment services, a project is therefore examining the possibilities and risks offered by a wallet in which customers of Sparkassen can safely store crypto assets.” The project team is preparing decisions in the committees of the Sparkasse Group in the first half of 2022.
Purchase directly from the current account
According to media reports, plans are being made to enable Sparkasse customers to buy crypto currencies directly from their checking accounts. It is not clear whether the idea will be implemented. In the best-case scenario, the relevant resolutions could be passed in the savings bank committees by the end of the first quarter, according to the reports. Then the first savings banks could offer the so-called crypto wallets, i.e. digital purses, at least as a test. Ultimately, each of the 370 savings banks would decide independently whether to introduce crypto trading or not.
Bitcoin and other currencies are generated by computing processes that get more and more complicated over time, so that the amount of cyber units is kept tight. Investors remain anonymous. There are no bills or coins, just encrypted blocks of data: bits and bytes on computers. Central bankers do not consider such crypto tokens to be a real currency and warn of risks from speculative bubbles. In their view, there is no control by a central bank or a state.
The courses fluctuate a lot. The price of the world’s best-known cryptocurrency Bitcoin more than doubled this year to a record high of a good 67,000 dollars, then fell to 42,000 dollars and most recently targeted the 50,000 dollar mark again.