Leumi will be the first Israeli bank to offer bitcoin and other cryptocurrency trading in partnership with Paxos, pending regulatory approval.
Leumi will be the first Israeli bank to offer bitcoin and other cryptocurrency trading in partnership with Paxos, pending regulatory approval.
- Leumi, through its digital investing platform Pepper Invest, seeks to be the first Israeli bank to offer trading of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- Pepper has partnered with U.S.-based custody and trading platform Paxos to launch the initiative, which is still pending approval.
- Pepper might be required to trace cryptocurrency transactions from purchase until an eventual conversion to fiat currency, according to the Bank of Israel.
Leumi Bank, through its digital platform Pepper Invest, will become the first Israeli bank to enable the trading of cryptocurrencies, per a Friday press release[1].
“We are proud to be the first in the Israeli banking system and one of the few worldwide to offer our customers to trade in cryptocurrencies simply, safely and reliably, without the need to download a crypto wallet and with all tax complexities being resolved by the bank”, says CEO of Pepper, Uri Nathan, per the release.
Pepper partnered with New York-based blockchain infrastructure company Paxos to achieve feasibility for the initiative, pending regulatory approval. Paxos has a history of assisting companies like PayPal [2]and Bank of America[3] through the fog of blockchain-based regulatory and technical obstacles, among which is the traceability of transactions.
The Bank of Israel previous published a draft[4] for regulations in the space stating banks seeking to operate in the realm of cryptocurrency would need to “clarify the source of the money used in the purchase of the virtual currency and the path through which the virtual
