“We do not in any way want to support the investment environment surrounding cryptocurrencies”, says Danske Bank, the largest bank in Denmark.
Lack of regulatory control have made cryptocurrencies targets for extortion, according to the bank.
The largest bank in the Nordics, Nordea, recently banned their employees from trading bitcoin.
Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, was established in 1871. In recent years it has taken a keen interest in new technologies. Mobilepay, an app for transfering money, was introduced in in 2013 and has attracted close to 4 million users in Denmark.
Recently, Danske Bank’s in-house startup Advanced Analytics has been using AI and machine learning technology to focus on consumer and behavior and analytics.
Cryptocurrencies, however, does not seem to be Danske Bank’s cup of tea. The possibility to buy financial instruments that are related to the price of cryptocurrencies will be phased out on Danske Bank’s platforms, they write in a statement on their website.
”We do not in any way want to support the investment environment surrounding cryptocurrencies”, the bank writes.
Further, they urge their customers to stay away from the field altogether:
”Overall, we are negative towards cryptocurrencies and we strongly recommend that our customers avoid investing in cryptocurrencies.”
Danske Bank is worried that cryptocurrencies lack investor and consumer protection, are highly volatile with a non-transparent price formation and that the lack of regulatory control have made them targets for criminal purposes including extortion.
”As a financial institution, we have an obligation to assist in the fight against financial crime and money laundering. At the current stage, cryptocurrencies do not offer the sufficient level of transparency in order for us to live up to our obligations within anti money laundering regulation”, they write.
In January, the largest bank in the Nordics, Nordea, also took a strong stance against cryptocurrencies, banning their 31,000 employees from trading bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Read more at:
https://nordic.businessinsider.com/cryptocurrencies-were-just-banned-by-the-largest-bank-in-denmark–
