Bitcoin Is Too Eccentric For Traditional Banks

Published 5 years ago on October 11, 2018

Bitcoin Is Too Eccentric For Traditional Banks

The crypto world seems to be on a different planet to the regular banking world. The companies behind the various digital currencies and their products are almost out of a futuristic science fiction movie. However, despite the crypto space being slightly different to the traditional banking sector, the reality is that when you own a company, you hire staff, equipment, servers, bills, taxes, and so on so traditional fiat currency is going to be needed at some point. This means that ventures aiming to take on the cryptocurrency world are still going to need traditional banking services from providers willing to get involved. But this is easier said than done for cryptocurrency-focused ventures looking to find business banking services through regular banks. This being said, you can kind of understand where banks are coming from when they turn away new crypto ventures as they havenâ€™t been 100% a good investment, in fact to this day itâ€™s not a 100%, but surely thereâ€™s less stigma surrounding the word â€˜cryptoâ€™? With blockchain technology becoming more and more integrated across sectors and digital currencies growing in the financial and business landscape.

â€œLack of knowledge, balancing needs of various customers, or fear may hinder more traditional financial institutions from taking part in this growing segment of the economy.â€

The folks over at ATB - or AlphaBeta - arenâ€™t afraid of the crypto world and feel like exploring the risks and opportunities of digital currencies is one that needs to be done. According to their website:

â€œWhen we first explored the possibility of providing business banking services to firms operating in the cryptocurrency space, our traditional risk and compliance measures resulted in a big â€˜NOâ€™. This provided us with an exceptional opportunity to look again at our systems to see how we might be able to get to a â€˜yesâ€™. Working directly with cryptocurrency experts, we made the big first step of identifying KYC (Know-your-customer) and AML (anti-money-laundering) thresholds that would have to be met in order for a business to qualify for business banking with ATB.â€

Investing in anything is a risk so itâ€™s important that you do your own research. According to ATB, crossing the threshold of banking with crypto related business could become a massive thing for a traditional bank such as ATB. It is a perfect fit for ATB to lead the way on business banking for cryptocurrency businesses What are your thoughts? Should traditional banks start seeing crypto as less of a risk than it is? Let us know what you think down in the comments below! Reference: ATB

Adrian Barkley

Adrian is an avid reader who first stumbled across Crypto after reading 'The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains' by Antony Lewis in 2018. Since then, Adrian has immersed himself within the industry, and has a real interest in Enterprise Blockchain solutions.