9 months ago
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After launching a digital assets custody platform for crypto last year, DZ has announced a new crypto project, this time for individual investors. It is due to be rolled out later this year.
One of the biggest side effects of cryptocurrency becoming so popular is that major corporations across the world are rolling out crypto-related goods and services. For crypto lovers, this means more avenues to buy, sell, and spend their digital assets. Crypto users in Germany have scored a major coup as DZ, one of the biggest banks in the country, has announced plans to support crypto trading. This comes via Souad Benkredda, a member of the bank’s board, speaking to Bloomberg.
Crypto Comes to DZ
According to Benkredda, this will be rolled out before the end of the year and will specifically cater to individual investors. The motivation for this, he says, is the growing demand for crypto-related services from consumers, which has seen more banks embrace digital assets.
“According to a study by the Genoverband, every second bank wants to offer this solution for their customers,” Benkredda said.
This announcement is a big deal mostly because of how influential DZ is. Over 700 cooperative lenders rely on DZ and these, in turn, boast over 30 million clients. This means that crypto trading services will be available to a large mass of consumers within Germany.
But those who have kept up with DZ will know that this is not its first time dabbling in cryptocurrency services. Last year, it launched its own blockchain-based digital assets custody platform for institutional customers.
At the time that this was announced, crypto securities were offered only to these institutional investors but there were also plans to offer crypto trading at some point. The management of DZ was also quite optimistic about the trajectory of blockchain technology in the financial world.
“We assume that within the next ten years, a significant proportion of capital market business will be processed via distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based infrastructures,” said Holger Meffert, head of securities services and digital custody at DZ. He added that blockchain can also play a complementary role within the financial industry in the medium term.
Corporations and Crypto
As we’ve said, cryptocurrency becoming so financially viable means that many financial corporations have been forced to get on board with it. This has included firms like JPMorgan, PayPal, and so on. Just recently, the approval of the Bitcoin Spot ETF has meant that more large-scale investments are flowing into the crypto space and this shows no signs of stopping soon.
And if DZ’s predictions about blockchain are true, the underlying technology behind Bitcoin will play a bigger role behind the scenes even as crypto takes centre stage. Ultimately, the main beneficiaries of these developments will be consumers who will have easier access to the digital assets they want, as well as the larger crypto sector which will reap the financial rewards.
