Wahl-Attorneys on Nostr: this medium sized German VR Bank ...
this medium sized German VR Bank
https://twitter.com/VR_BayernMitte/status/1681391869190602781?s=20
is trying to educate it´s customers how to get BTC in self-custody (KYC-ed), as a starter not too bad.
Niko Jilch made a podcast with one of the executives, @andreas_streb,
https://twitter.com/NikoJilch/status/1681197410985426945?s=20
, nice.
What the VR Bank Bayern-Mitte, what @andreas_streb, did not get yet: that it could foster business with like-minded businesses to spread the word and this would, most likely, be useful for the VR Bayern-Mitte as well. So, the VR Bank Bayern-Mitte explicitly did not open a EUR-bank account for a (foreign) BTC-only onramp-business. It acted bad-ass.
One of their advisers: @JoeMartinDE, a journalist, doing ads for them
https://twitter.com/JoeMartinDE/status/1673298098490167297?s=20
https://twitter.com/JoeMartinDE/status/1673752771550494720?s=20
and is speaking of the bank as “BTC Supporter”.
Legally, seemingly, the bank believes to be backed by the lack of any obligation / compulsion to transact / to contract. Where there is no compulsion to contract, a potential customer (private or business) has no legal right to get a bank account at any given bank. Although there is such a legal compulsion for some banks in the EU / Germany to open bank accounts to a consumer (private customer, so called basic-bank-account), there is none for businesses.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32014L0092
Swiss banks are more business oriented; especially for start-ups / ICOs they tried to boil down some guidelines (2019), how banks should deal with applications from small and medium sized start-up businesses.
https://www.swissbanking.ch/_Resources/Persistent/8/2/0/e/820ecd3799e43523b91c7c3f65122e97f9a85601/SBA_guidelines_on_opening_corporate_acounts_for_DLT_companies_2019_EN.pdf
Even theses guidelines do not apply to the maintenance of cryptoasset accounts for clients.
And: “There is no legal obligation on the part of SBA (Swiss Bankers Association) members to open accounts.”
For (foreign) businesses in Germany the situation is dire.
“. Eine Pflicht zum Vertragsabschluss besteht grundsätzlich nicht. Der gesetzliche Anspruch auf Abschluss eines Basiskontovertrages nach § 31 Zahlungskontengesetz gilt lediglich für Zahlungskonten von Verbrauchern, nicht hingegen für Geschäftskonten. Auch der in einigen Bundesländern existierende sog. Kontrahierungszwang der Sparkassen gemäß Sparkassengesetzen bzw. Sparkassenverordnungen (s. etwa § 5 SpkG-NRW, § 5 Abs. 2 SpkO-BY) führt, soweit ersichtlich, lediglich zu einem Anspruch auf ein Girokonto für natürliche Personen. Ferner kann die Sparkasse die Aufnahme oder Fortführung der Geschäftsbeziehung im Einzelfall aus wichtigen Gründen ablehnen.
Quelle: Dr. Joachim Püls
Notar
Mitglied der Notarkammer Sachsen
März 2020”
https://www.existenzgruender.de/SharedDocs/BMWi-Expertenforum/Foerderung-Finanzierung/Bankkontakt-gespraech/Bank-verweigert-Firmenkonto.html
So, the VR Bayern-Mitte is underperforming vehemently, imho.
What a BTC-related start-up could possibly do in this situation is to open a small Ltd. in Germany (called UG, kind of a small GmbH), define in the set-up-process what exactly the business area should be and then open a bank account in Germany. As the deposit of the share capital, required by law, is done by bank transfer, a bank account in Germany (some German or EU-bank, based in Germany) is not only paramount, but essential. If the tax authorities involved in the set-up gave their o.k., there is always a bank to contract with for an account.
attorney Michael Wahl