By Lawrence White and Elizabeth Howcroft
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Nationwide Constructing Society has restricted prospects’ potential to purchase cryptocurrencies, the lender stated in an e-mail to its members on Thursday.
Nationwide stated it is not going to enable funds to crypto exchanges utilizing bank cards and can restrict grownup present accounts to five,000 kilos ($5,995) of purchases per day.
The constructing society stated the transfer was in response to regulatory concern over the dangers of shopping for digital currencies.
Cryptocurrency costs surged in 2020 and 2021 earlier than sharp declines final 12 months as rising rates of interest prompted traders to ditch riskier property. A sequence of crypto collapses together with the FTX trade left traders with heavy losses, leading to calls to control the sector.
Nationwide’s announcement follows comparable strikes by different UK banks. In November, as a part of measures to guard prospects from scams, Santander launched limits on the quantity prospects may switch to cryptocurrency exchanges and stated it might quickly block UK prospects from sending any real-time funds to cryptocurrency exchanges.
Natwest Group launched restrictions in 2021.
Nationwide’s web site says the financial institution will proceed to limit funds made to the Binance crypto trade, citing “comparable motion from different suppliers, media protection and regulatory uncertainty”.
The U.S. Division of Justice is investigating Binance for suspected cash laundering and sanctions violations, Reuters has beforehand reported. Binance has stated it repeatedly works with regulatory businesses to deal with questions they might have.
($1 = 0.8340 kilos)
(Modifying by Sinead Cruise and David Goodman)
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