On January 1, 2025, the Regulation for the Cryptoasset Market (MiCA) will come into force in the European Union (EU) and Spanish banks are already getting ready to offer services related to cryptocurrencies.
As reported during the Merge Madrid event, which took place in Spain from October 8 to 10, there are several Spanish banks that are rushing their applications to regulators to launch its offers at the beginning of next year. Among the first to get ready to provide services with bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies are BBVA, Santander and Caixabank.
“We are preparing so that the bank has the conditions it needs to offer custody and trading,” explained Francisco Maroto, head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at BBVA. «We started in Switzerland because there was regulation and, once launched, we showed that we could work in other markets, so we advanced to Türkiye. In the rest of the BBVA group’s geographies we will do the same if the regulations allow us to,” he clarified.
He thus recalled that BBVA is one of the pioneer banks in offering – since 2021 – custody and purchase and sale services for bitcoin, ether (ETH) and USDC in Switzerland, one of the countries that has one of the most advanced regulations for crypto assets. Through this subsidiary they also reach clients in Latin America. They then entered Turkey through the private bank Garanti.
In 2023 BBVA brought the offer in Spain through the financial instrument Fidelity Physical Bitcoin ETN (Exchange Traded Note), a bond from the asset manager Fidelity that replicates the performance of bitcoin and that is listed on the stock market. The next step they plan to take is to add all these services, including the purchase and sale of crypto assets, to expand in Spain and throughout Europe.
A similar plan has Banco Santanderwhich already offers an ETP through Openbank, its digital banking that is related to companies in the cryptocurrency ecosystem such as Coinbase. Openbank already markets 13 traded products listed on the German stock exchange. Since 2023, its high-net-worth clients in Switzerland also have the possibility of trading and investing in BTC and ETH.
“As holdings of cryptocurrencies as an alternative asset class continue to expand, we expect our clients will prefer to trust their existing financial institutions to be responsible for their assets,” said John Whelan, Head of Digital Assets at Santander.
Hence the idea of expanding the offer to Spain and other countries in the eurozone. in the first quarter of 2025after the entry into force of MiCA. Santander will leverage its digital infrastructure to provide its clients with regulated access to crypto assets.
In fact, the offer was already expanded last June, when the financial institution, recognized as one of the most important in Spain, expanded its services with cryptocurrencies. to selected retail customersthrough the Toro digital investment platform. As CriptoNoticias reported, these new services respond to a change in position on the bitcoin ecosystem, which the bank highlighted after having restricted, in 2022, transactions from the entity to bitcoin exchanges.
A similar project is managed by the banks CaixaBank, Bankinter and Sabadell, which They are evaluating what type of services they could offer, although they are still not as clear (as BBVA and Santander) about what they are going to do. Joan Manel Arcas, Innovation & Blockchain Project Manager at CaixaBank Tech, said that it was “quite evident” that with MiCA, banks will begin to launch the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies.
Particularly, Caixabank is evaluating the services and products it could offer its customers from 2025. They have not defined it, but “they have it on their radar.” As proof of this, last year it established alliances with seven fintechs in order to participate in a pilot project for the development of a cryptoasset buying and selling service.
They expect demand to rise to adjust services
In statements to local media, the Caixabank spokesperson also assured that the bank They positively value the new European regulationsbecause it allows progress in consumer protection by requiring operators in this market to have obligations similar to those of other financial assets.
Arcas thinks that MiCA will provide the cryptoasset market with greater legal certainty in the EU. Therefore everyone waits increase the demand for services related to cryptocurrencies.
But banks need more customers in Europe, as Francisco Maroto of BBVA warned. «Once banks can sell crypto legally, there has to be demand, because there is a lot of difference in adoption between developed countries and those that are not,” he commented.
In Argentina and Venezuela, where the currency is weak, demand is very high. Just like in Türkiye. In Türkiye, in fact, 40% of the population has cryptocurrencies. But in Europe the percentage is loweronly 10% or 20% have them.
Francisco Maroto, head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at BBVA.
These are the reasons that explain the slowness observed in the registration of banking companies before the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) of Spain throughout 2024.
As some members of the banking sector expressed a few months ago, doubts still persist among many bankers about whether or not they should get involved in the world of cryptocurrencies. Which suggests that their participation in this ecosystem possibly still limiteddespite the new regulation.
According to analysts, the majority of Spanish banks are “walking on eggshells”, although they admit that these are products that whet the appetite of their clients. That is why it is believed that bankers in Spain, in principle, will provide restricted services, which will not include retail clients.
On this topic was pronounced recently Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, deputy director of the Austrian platform Bitpanda, who assured that in the Spanish market more or less all the large banking groups are considering entering that space. However, think it’s not going to happen from one day to the nextand it will be much more staggered.
“What we will certainly see is that most banks will want to obtain a MiCA license to offer those services on their own as well.” In general, it is most likely that the inclusion of these entities in the Spanish bitcoiner ecosystem will take some time to become massive.
