Although often large banks are rather skeptical about bitcoin in public, in fact it turns out that they themselves are not averse to working in the industry and are already making plans for the future. The last example of this behavior was demonstrated by Barclays Bank, which, according to reports, is conducting a customer survey on the possible launch of a trading platform for crypto-currencies.
British banking giant Barclays, apparently, is considering the possibility of launching a trading crypto-currency platform. The company is trying to find out whether there is a demand for such a service among customers, including hedge funds and large investors, and whether they want to work in this area. This would make Barclays the first major bank in London to offer such a service.
Although the bank argues that the company still does not have specific plans to launch a trading crypto-exchange platform, sources report that the firm conducted a preliminary assessment of demand and profitability.
"We are constantly following the developments in the digital crypto-currency space and will continue to dialogue with our clients, finding out their needs and desires related to this market," said Andrew Smith, a spokesman for the company, in a statement issued by Bloomberg.
If Barclays does not face problems on the part of regulators, it should not have problems with sufficient demand for such a service, given the large number of hedge funds that came on the scene during the sharp rise in the price of crypto currency at the end of 2017. Many of these funds needed a large partner, approved by regulators. The only major bank that announced such intentions remains Goldman Sachs, although its CEO subsequently denied rumors that the bank creates a trading platform for crypto currency.
Bank Barclays is not the first time the subject of attention is crypto-currency and block-media. In March of this year, it became known that Coinbase entered into a partnership agreement with the bank to gain access to the inter-bank system Faster Payments Scheme, which provides faster transfers. In the autumn of last year, Barclays joined the Settlement Coin project, which is being developed to prepare central banks for issuing their own crypto-currencies, which should simplify the transaction between world banks using solid security on a special blockchain.