Samuel OskysGermany has pushed a new bill through the upper house of Germany’s legislation that will allow banks to directly sell and store cryptocurrencies for clients.
This will be possible from the 1st January 2020 following the country’s 16 states making a final decision on the bill. It is believed that no resistance to the bill will be met.
When the bills are passed and officially becomes law this will create a significant step forward in Germany and also a ground-breaking moment for cryptocurrency in general.
Germany itself is one of the biggest economies in the world and one of the EU’s most influential countries. The decision to officially embrace cryptocurrency will no doubt set a president for other economies and countries to follow.
With the new bill in place, Germany is signalling to the international market that cryptocurrency is to be integrated and embraced not banned and rejected. The new law will also make Germany an attractive destination for global crypto projects who wish to base operations in a country that supports and facilitates the use of crypto.
Lead consultant at Major Consulting firm DLC, Sven Hildebrandt, commented:
Germany is well on its way to becoming a crypto heaven
German Banks will need to obtain a license to offer crypto-assets services and it appears they are keen to do so,” the banking association Bdb (Bundesverband Deutscher Banken) commenting
Credit institutions are experienced in the safekeeping of client assets and in risk management, are committed to investor protection and have always been controlled by the financial supervision.
BdB further commented that the new directive makes it possible for investors to invest in digital assets domestically rather than searching elsewhere for foreign funds. The CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao (CZ) emphasized that “smart banks do this” and “Bitcoin [is] still not dead.”
The New bill follows the government publishing a blockchain strategy in September that set the country on course to become a business hub for blockchain. Two German government ministers commented at the announcement of the strategy “Germany should be an attractive location for the development of blockchain applications and investments in their scaling”.
Image source by Live Coin Watch
