Trading and custody: DZ Bank ventures into the Bitcoin market

DZ Bank, the central bank for the approximately 700 cooperative banks in Germany, announced today on LinkedIn that private customers will be able to trade and store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via the bank from next year.

The phrase "crypto-coins such as Bitcoin" suggests that the offering will include the number one cryptocurrency as well as a selection of "altcoins".

The central institution of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken cooperative financial group is working together with IT service provider Atruvia AG and the Stuttgart Digital stock exchange.

According to the announcement, Westerwald Bank eG is the first cooperative bank to have already opened crypto wallets and successfully carried out transactions. "Other cooperative banks will also enter the test phase shortly," the LinkedIn post states.

In an interview with Bloomberg at the beginning of the year, Souad Benkredda, member of the DZ Bank Management Board, emphasized that the demand was high, but that each institution would make the decision to activate the offer itself.

According to a study by the Geno Association, every second bank wants to activate the solution for its customers.
_{Souad Benkredda told Bloomberg}

Now that Bitcoin has arrived on Wall Street in the wake of its ETF approval in the US, there have also been a number of forays into the promising Bitcoin market by major German financial institutions this year.

In April, for example, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg announced that it had entered into a strategic partnership with the crypto exchange Bitpanda to enable corporate customers to buy and store Bitcoin.

In September, it was also announced that the €17 billion Commerzbank was now offering institutional clients the opportunity to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) is also reportedly currently reviewing the possibility of giving customers the option to buy and sell Bitcoin and Co.

The fact that many cooperative banks are now also likely to become Bitcoin or crypto service providers is another milestone in the institutional acceptance of this still young asset.

Volksbank-Raiffeisenbank Bayern-Mitte is one of the banks that has been active in the Bitcoin market for some time. Until now, however, the cooperative bank has not offered custody services, as the new DZ Bank offering does.

The German landscape of Bitcoin service providers is constantly expanding - even if some financial institutions have been critical of the asset class in the past. These doubts now seem to have been increasingly dispelled.