Revolut, a popular digital banking app, got approved by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CYSEC) to offer bitcoin and crypto to customers in the European Economic Area.
The company has over 17 million customers in the European Economic Area and approximately 20 million customers globally.
Revolut had offered customers the possibility to get bitcoin and crypto exposure in the past, but without acting as a wallet provider or allowing customers to move bitcoin from Revolut to self-custody.
The new authorization by CYSEC gives Revolut more freedom to offer bitcoin and crypto directly to its 17 million customers in the EEA.
The digital banking app, which is primarily used in the EU and UK, is the first to be awarded crypto-asset service provider (CASP) by the CYSEC.
Cyprus has made itself a name as a bitcoin and crypto friendly country despite its history of bank runs, freezes and “bail-ins” during the Cypriot Financial Crisis between 2012-2013.
Cyprus became notorious during its financial crisis when it used customer’s bank deposits to bail out banks and converted deposits to bank shares that quickly plummeted and lost most of their value.
Now Cyprus is attracting interest from companies like Crypto.com, eToro and Bitpanda due to its pro-bitcoin and crypto stance.
The general regulatory landscape surrounding bitcoin is anything but easy or straight forward in the EU. The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) worried many in the bitcoin space due to potentially privacy-invading legislation.
The EU also made headlines when it floated banning Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining, the underlying consensus mechanism that bitcoin relies on and arguably one of the most important inventions that secures the bitcoin network and makes it hard, digital money.
Many bitcoin and crypto companies operating in the EU, including Revolut, are preparing for MiCA to come into effect in an attempt to comply with the new EU-wide regulations.
