Garanti BBVA Offers Cryptocurrency Trading Services in a Hint of Things to Come

Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) is deepening its foray into the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Garanti BBVA Kripto, a cryptocurrency custodian platform operated by Garanti BBVA — Turkey’s fifth-largest bank, which as of December 2023 was approximately 86% owned by BBVA — will soon provide cryptocurrency trading services to the general public. Bit2Me, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in Spain in 2014, will be used as the bank’s trade execution center.

Now that the Markets in Cryptoassets (MiCA) regulation is in full effect across the EU, the partnership between BBVA and the cryptocurrency exchange is a strong signal that more things are brewing on the horizon, according to Abel Peña, head of Bit2Me. Sales officer.

“I think in 2025 we will see a lot of banks across Europe offering spot cryptocurrency trading to their users,” Peña told CoinDesk. “We are in very close contact with more than 50 financial institutions, and with banks across Europe and internationally, and will start launching their services in the first quarter of 2025.”

BBVA had assets worth $857 billion in 2023, making it the 43rd largest bank in the world at the time, and the second largest in Spain after Banco Santander. While Garanti BBVA Kripto has already been advertising cryptocurrency trading services on its website since January 2024, the product was only offered as a beta version and was not available to the general public, according to Bit2Me.

Peña said that BBVA began to embrace the cryptocurrency industry in Türkiye because the regulatory environment allowed it to move early. Since the completion of the MiCA rollout on December 30, financial institutions such as BBVA will now be able to obtain approval from local regulators and offer exposure to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies to their European clients.

“As soon as they get the green light, they will start,” Peña said. He added: “This is based on the knowledge that many of them are already integrated with us,” but he refused to reveal the names of the institutions.

But why is the banking sector suddenly so excited about cryptocurrencies? Peña said the regulatory certainty provided by MiCA played a role, but US President-elect Donald Trump — who became a vocal supporter of cryptocurrencies midway through his campaign, and won a landslide victory in November — was also a factor. Not to mention the various ideas being put forward to push the US government to create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin.

The massive success of US bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which have amassed record inflows of $35 billion in less than a year, has certainly not been harmed either. “We’re talking about an asset [bitcoin] Which many users and companies want to know about. “This is something banks can’t deny anymore,” Peña said.

BBVA is not the first European bank to move towards cryptocurrencies. Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest multinational investment bank building Cluster of Ethereum using ZKsync technology and It was working On cryptocurrency custody and tokenization services with Swiss startup Taurus since 2023, among others. For its part, French financial services company Société Générale has its own cryptocurrency arm, called SG-FORGE, which was recently launched. Announce It will publish its Euro stablecoin on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) network.