German banking giant Commerzbank applies for crypto license

One of the largest banking institutions successful Germany has confirmed it applied for a section crypto licence earlier this year, marking the archetypal clip a large slope has made a determination toward cryptocurrencies successful the country.

A spokesperson from Commerzbank confirmed to section media outlet Börsen-Zeitung connected April 14 that it “applied for the crypto custody licence successful the archetypal 4th of 2022.” If approved it would beryllium authorized to connection speech services on with custody and extortion of crypto-assets.

Commerzbank serves implicit 18 cardinal customers and implicit 70,000 organization clients, and the cryptocurrency offering volition reportedly people its organization lawsuit base.

Since Jan. 1 2020 immoderate concern wishing to connection cryptocurrency services successful Germany indispensable archetypal question support from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority besides known arsenic BaFin.

Currently lone 4 companies person support but BaFin states it has implicit 25 applications pending from firms wishing to run crypto custody businesses.

Coinbase Germany was the archetypal to beryllium approved by the regulator successful June 2021 and the Berlin based fiscal exertion steadfast Upvest was astir precocious approved for a licence successful March.

Related: 'Let’s physique a Europe wherever Web3 tin flourish:' Crypto companies motion an unfastened missive to EU regulators

Commerzbank has seen engagement successful blockchain projects as acold backmost arsenic 2018, and carried retired some of the archetypal transactions connected a distributed ledger exertion (DLT) information lending level with different large banks the pursuing year.

More recently, successful August 2021 the steadfast entered into a concern to develop blockchain-based integer marketplaces for existing plus classes specified arsenic creation and existent estate.

Germany introduced a raft of reforms, regulations and further adoption of blockchain exertion and cryptocurrencies successful 2021.

German investors are besides keen connected adopting crypto. A March study by Kucoin revealed 44% of Germans are “motivated to put successful cryptocurrencies and “37% of German crypto investors person been trading cryptocurrencies for implicit a year.”