Replace (April 29 at 8:54 pm UTC): This text has been up to date to incorporate feedback from Bunq’s CEO to Cointelegraph.
Europe’s second-largest neobank, Bunq, is increasing into cryptocurrency, citing rising retail investor demand for digital belongings worldwide.
The Amsterdam-based neobank introduced the launch of Bunq Crypto on April 29, a brand new providing enabling its customers to put money into over 300 cryptocurrencies, together with Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL).
Beginning April 29, Bunq customers within the Netherlands, France, Spain, Eire, Italy and Belgium will have the ability to entry cryptocurrencies immediately by the Bunq app, in accordance with an announcement.
Bunq CEO Ali Niknam instructed Cointelegraph that the transfer was pushed by rising consumer demand for digital belongings. “We consider that now many, many individuals, the massive majority, are all in favour of crypto, and we consider that they are all in favour of shopping for crypto by an setting that they’ll belief, and so they can relate to and so they can acknowledge,” he mentioned.
Furthermore, a friendlier regulatory panorama helped clear the trail for the financial institution’s growth into crypto. “I believe for a very long time, the way forward for crypto from a regulatory perspective was a bit unclear. And we’ve got seen a number of that change over the course of the previous couple of months. And so we felt sufficiently assured as a regulated entity to now supply this to most of the people,” Niknam mentioned.
The crypto providing is powered in partnership with Kraken, the 14th-largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange globally by trading volume.
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All-in-one monetary platforms in focus
This marks the primary section of Bunq’s world crypto growth, with plans to regularly roll out buying and selling throughout your complete European Financial Space, in addition to in america and the UK.
As of June 2024, Bunq reported greater than 12.5 million customers, up from 9 million customers a 12 months earlier.
Bunq’s transfer displays a broader development amongst monetary establishments searching for to consolidate companies — banking, financial savings and investing — into single digital platforms.
In a February post on X, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong mentioned he expects future monetary techniques to be anchored by “a single major monetary account” the place customers handle all their monetary actions.
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Demand for simplified crypto entry
Analysis commissioned by Bunq signifies a major hole between out there crypto choices and consumer expectations in Europe. An estimated 65% of European customers are searching for a unified platform to handle banking, financial savings and cryptocurrency investments, in accordance with the research.
Over 50% of surveyed traders need crypto publicity however mentioned the prevailing platforms don’t meet their necessities, notably concerning simplicity and safety for brand new traders.
“Our customers the world over have lengthy waited for a easy, secure and simple option to put money into digital belongings,” mentioned Ali Niknam, founder and CEO of Bunq. “Now, every part they are going to ever want to avoid wasting, spend and make investments — together with crypto — is on one platform.”
Bunq’s crypto growth follows Revolut’s move in November 2024 to develop its crypto alternate companies throughout 30 European Financial Space markets.
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