24th November 2023 > > gate.io & Raiffeisen Bank.

tl;dr

gate.io has been scared off by the UK regulator whose judgement is suspect on so many issues. Raiffeisen Bank will facilitate crypto adoption by its retail client base.

Market Sna

Market Wrap

A typically quiet overnight after Thanksgiving Day. For a bit of fun (please don’t take this seriously), let’s see what Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3, has to say about the approval of a spot BTC ETF:

“It has come to my attention that there are some #Bitcoiners that don’t think #Bitcoin can reach $1,000,000 in a matter of days/weeks after ETF money starts to flow in. They’re in for a pleasant surprise.”

Go on Samson.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – gate.io

gate.io has started restricting services to UK customers. Specifically, “only spot trading and withdraw function is available” according to Kira Fisher of the Support Team. Kira has been very helpful over the last few days with some questions and queries of mine, and she was very apologetic about this reduced service. Of all the centralised cryptocurrency exchanges, gate.io is right up there for customer service, and plaudits for that are well deserved.

If you are from the UK and you do have assets at gate.io, you will get this scary warning when you try to interact with the site:

Better to be safe than sorry. I recommend moving any coins you hold there to your Ledger Nano X, in case the restrictions become, well, more restricting.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Raiffeisen Bank

The EU’s world beating crypto regulation, MiCA, is fast proving its worth, with crypto related companies lining up to set up new operations within the EU, mostly based in Ireland because of its progressive and liberal approach to setting low rates of corporation tax, hence growing the tax base and tax revenues for investment in public services.

Raiffeisen has announced plans to take advantage of the regulatory certainty within the EU (if only Gensler would take note) by offering crypto trading to its Vienna based clients (that’s about 25% of the Austrian population) from the end of January 2024. This service will be executed through BitPanda, but clients don’t see that, nor do they need to know of it. Curt Chadha, head of innovation, explains:

“The customer can use their mobile device to enter BitPanda through the Raiffeisen app. The experience will be familiar, so confirming a trade will work exactly like an account-to-account bank transfer with the same sort of security customers are used to.”

So, that’s execution risk, and custodial risk both dealt with.

The bank intends to roll out this service to its 18mm clients across Austria and Eastern Europe later.

At the end of June this year, Raiffeissen had $225bn AUM, so the impact of this move into cryptos will be dwarfed by the launch of spot BTC ETFs by BlackRock and Fidelity. But don’t make the mistake of dismissing this news. Banks like Raiffeissen often tend towards the conservative side. If this initiative is successful, you can expect many others to follow, opening crypto adoption to a retail audience that cannot be reached through other means.

This is crypto adoption happening right here, right now.