Although Spain has been gradually opening the compass so that its citizens have access to bitcoin (BTC) and the rest of the cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, the government also makes merits to distance them from that world. The Bank of Spain indicated that it has the power to block purchases of cryptocurrencies.
The Bank points out that, in some cases, it can be prevent a user from acquiring cryptocurrencies in exchanges or entities that have been authorized by regulators to offer services, by sending fiat money. This means that banks are authorized to block the account that is intended to be used to buy crypto assets.
The reason for this decision is due to the fact that for the Bank of Spain “cases of fraud are frequent in which fraudulent access to the accounts of an entity’s clients occurs, after having stolen their passwords from the client”, and then end up transferring funds to acquire BTC and other cryptocurrencies, according to explained the Bank on his blog.
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Although that is not all that can happen to a user of cryptocurrencies in Spain. The agency can also classify the purchase of bitcoin as a “high risk” operation, so it will require other types of controlssuch as, for example, making a phone call to the user or asking them to go to a bank branch.
All this must be fulfilled since financial entities are subject to the Law for the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism. There is also a registry of virtual asset service providers (PSAV) in Spain, which requires exchanges and digital wallets based in the country to present themselves to calls and respond to the demands of the highest Spanish monetary entity.
So far, the Spanish authorities have granted permission to seven service providers with cryptocurrencies, integrating them in its registry of companies dedicated to the exchange and custody of crypto assets. All of them must comply with these regulations.
The first to be approved was Bit2Me last February. It was recently joined by CR Technology and Finance, Bit Base, Blox, Trade Republic Bank, Globalstar Technologies, Onyze Digital Assets, and Bitcoinforme, according to publish a local media.
Criticisms against the regulator’s rules
The Bank of Spain’s announcement was criticized by the Spanish tax economist, José Antonio Bravo, on his Twitter account.
In Bravo’s opinion, the statement can be interpreted as meaning that the banks are “legitimate owners of the money you have in them” and that, “if they don’t want you to buy bitcoin and cryptoactives, they will block your account by making any excuse. ».
Recently in an interview with CriptoNoticias, Bravo also showed its disagreement against the Anti-Fraud Lawdefended by the Ministry of Finance, which covers cryptocurrencies and exempts foreign centralized exchanges from tax and regulatory responsibilities.
The economist considers that this norm puts Spanish bitcoin exchanges at a disadvantage compared to foreignersbecause the latter do not have to fulfill any type of responsibility with the Spanish State.
A tool to avoid banks
As this medium has reported, the Bitcoin ecosystem is broad enough to allow those interested in acquiring BTC to do so without KYC (Know Your Customer), without fees or commissions and instantly, preventing a bank from being aware of any such management.
One of those tools is called LNP2PBot and it is a payment application on the Lightning Network (LN), which uses a Telegram bot to facilitate interaction between the parties.
To use LNP2PBot you need to have a Telegram account and username. The username can be a pseudonym, since, as previously mentioned, the application does not request personal identification data to operate.
When creating an offer to buy or sell bitcoin, is automatically posted on a Telegram channel dedicated, from where users can also capture some of their interest. The post displays information about the bidders, such as the number of successful trades and the volume traded. In addition, the bot has a reputation system to rate the experience.
It is currently used by users from Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, the United States, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba and even Brazil. So far, it works in Spanish, but they plan to add new languages soon.