Banco Sella, an Italian bank, has recently launched Bitcoin trading services for citizens of the COVID-19 gripped country.
Per the official announcement, the bank is offering the digital currency trading services on its Hype platform, and itself is acting as an intermediary to mitigate any risks associated with the crypto exchange.
Capitalizing on the crisis?
The move comes at a time when Italy is under lockdown due to the major outbreak of the Coronavirus in the country.
The bank believes that the country’s citizens being stuck in their homes are showing a growing interest in digital currencies. With the plummet of global stock markets, investments in digital assets seem to be a better option to many, but the volatile market has risks of its own.
Banco Sella’s services were introduced to its 1.2 million customer base on Hype, which will also be able to spend the digital currency in making transactions.
Hype already offers trading facilities with financial instruments including derivatives and contract-for-difference (CFD).
Mentioning the move, Antonio Valitutti, General Manager at Hype said: “The cryptocurrency and Bitcoin market in particular continues to arouse interest, especially among the public that constitutes our customer base — by definition young and smart and who, increasingly, expect to be able to access this world through the tool that they use to manage money on a daily basis.”
The platform also supports the linking of multiple bank accounts, enabling its users to purchase Bitcoins directly from the accounts. Notably, Hype has kept the service free, charging only a 1 percent transaction fee.
The bank also put a daily purchase limit of 500 euros (around $536) and an annual limit of $2,500 (almost $2,680). The premium clients of the platform, however, can purchase 4,990 euros (around $5350) worth Bitcoins per day while the annual limit is kept at 50,000 euros ($53,611).
