Trakai Island Castle, near Vilnius the capital of Lithuania. Credit: Shutterstock.
Banks including Barclays and Bank of America have taken a hardline when it comes to companies in the cryptocurrency sector.
Bank elsewhere is their message.
Last year hundreds of businesses operating crypto marketplaces, exchanges and trading platforms found their accounts suspended or shut down as banks were unable to vet their cash through standard anti-money laundering procedures.
Even India’s Central Bank has announced it will no longer deal with customers dealing in cryptocurrencies, because of the risks involved.
But elsewhere, banks that back crypto are booming.
Banking elsewhere
In Gibraltar, Poland, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein and Lithuania, the crackdown on crypto has been big news for their more liberal banking landscapes.
One Lithuanian payments provider, Mistertango, this morning revealed a 1,300% year-on-year growth in transactions it handles for client businesses.
Mistertango reported transactions of €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) on its platform last year, up from €89 million ($103.3 million) in 2016/17.
Audrius Ramanauskas, founder of Mistertango.
CEO Audrius Ramanauskas told Forbes that the vast increase was the result of 1,000 crypto marketplace businesses like Coingate, Quoinex and Coinfalcon which had signed up to the service to handle their fiat payments over the last 12 months.
“The last year or so has seen a flurry of banks in the U.S. and the U.K. rushing to ban crypto-related activity for businesses and individuals,” Ramanauskas explained.
Not only is this an overreaction to the potential risks but these banks could indeed be leaving money on the table. The big problem here is a lack of understanding.”
Despite the fears in the mainstream banking sector, Ramanauskas insisted that his company has “exhaustive” KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) checks on all its customers which comply with all of Lithuania’s laws.
Meanwhile, in Gibraltar, the government is in the final stages of passing the world’s first regulations for initial coin offerings, and in Liechtenstein the royal family has been so welcoming to blockchain businesses that companies like Aeternity are flocking to the principality.
"They're making it really easy to incorporate a cryptocurrency business,” Yanislav Malahov, founder of Aeternity told Forbes earlier this summer.
You can open a company without a bank account, just by using Bitcoin or Ethereum."
In Ramanauskas's view, it's these forward-thinking countries which are set to soar as crypto goes mainstream.
"Acceptance of crypto is not so much a matter of ‘if’ as it is ‘when’. The rise of blockchain technology and the prevalence of cryptocurrency won’t be stifled. It’s the fastest banks and fintechs that will win."
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