24th October 2022 > > France.

tl;dr

France is crypto friendly!

Market Snap

Market Wrap

According to CryptoQuant (https://cryptoquant.com/quicktake/6353a6ed0d35e01068fc7bad-Sufficiently-old-coins-are-moving-spent) old coins that last moved between 2 years and 5 years ago, have been moving in large size to centralised exchanges.

It is hard to interpret this as a positive sign in the short-term.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – France

Stung by the CCC criticism levelled at the authorities in recent months, and despite the best efforts of convicted criminal Christine Lagarde (head of the ECB) to trash the crypto revolution, France is now making strenuous efforts to divert crypto tax dollars its way.

Last week crypto.com announced a EUR 150mm investment in France, including a regional hub in Paris.

Centralised cryptocurrency exchanges Luno and Binance have received regulatory approval to conduct their business within France. Binance also announced a EUR 100mm investment with a statement that France is "uniquely positioned to be the leader of this industry in Europe", which is a bold claim, and all the more surprising for it.

Those with personal experience of French bureaucratic processes are immensely delighted by these turns of events.

…

But the latest news is how we really know that France is getting serious about cryptos.

SocGen (Société Générale), a leading investment bank and France’s third largest by market cap, has gained regulatory approval for it to act as a digital asset service provider.

This means that its clients – and presumably this initiative is aimed at the institutional space, and not retail, at least for now – can invest in cryptos using SocGen as both the executor and the custodian of crypto assets.

We haven’t touched on the issue of custody for some time now, but that does not mean its importance has lessened in recent times.

Devolving responsibility for the storage and safety of crypto assets, with associated insurance cover in case of loss or theft, is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for wholescale crypto adoption.

If SocGen is seeing customer demand for this product, then so are all the other banks in Europe.