Key facts:
Bitpanda is already authorized by regulators in Austria, Italy, Sweden and France.
Officially, this company can now provide services to residents of Spain.
Bitpanda, a cryptocurrency exchange noted for its value of 1,000 million dollars as a company, which makes it a “unicorn”, already has a license to operate in Spain.
The Bank of Spain, the central banking entity of that country, granted authorization to this and other companies in the area of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
«[…] We are very happy to announce that Bitpanda is now officially registered with the Bank of Spain as a provider of virtual currency exchange for fiduciary currencies and custody of electronic wallets”, ad bitpanda on your blog.
According to him website of the Bank of Spain, Bitpanda is already part of the registry of “service providers of exchange of virtual currency for fiduciary currency and custody of electronic wallets”, along with 15 other companies.
Between the companies that share this position together with Bitpanda there are others like BitcoinformSL, which manages the Bit2Me exchange, which received its approval in February of this year, reported CriptoNoticias.
Also present Bit Base, SL or BitBase, a physical cryptocurrency exchange which has dozens of ATMs throughout Spain.
Bank of Spain stays out of cryptocurrencies, but could act
According to Law 10/2010, which specifies the nature of this registry of exchange and custody service providers for bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, the Banco de España is only in charge of enforcing the registration of said companies before this entity.
The bank disregards the supervision and express approval of the activities they carry out, leaving these powers to other legal entities in Spain, as explained:
Law 10/2010 includes these providers as obligated subjects for its purposes and introduces an obligation to register with the Bank of Spain; however, it does not establish rules for financial supervision, prudential, corporate governance, technological security or market conduct or information transparency. The Bank of Spain does not supervise, for example, the financial or operational and security risks of these businesses nor does it have any competence in matters of conduct over these providers.
Bank of Spain.
However the Bank of Spain could block the bank account of those users who want to buy BTC or other cryptocurrencies, as we reported in CriptoNoticias last April.
Authorizations to cryptocurrency exchange companies have been granted since February of this year, after being called in October 2021.
For its part, the National Securities Markets Commission (CNMV), has called repeatedly to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges in Spainindicating that they must follow anti-money laundering measures.
This body has international exchanges on its “grey list” that, formally, have not obtained authorization to operate in Spain, such as Binance and Coinbase, although these exchanges are not blocked or prohibited.
Meanwhile, the European Union is discussing regulations that could apply to all the countries that are part of the organization, and that seek to establish regulatory parameters for BTC exchanges in the region.