The Bank of Lithuania has broken a months-long silence on cryptocurrencies to tell lenders they need a dialogue to help understand the market.
“Blind denial, reluctance to understand and to work with the cryptocurrency world leads nowhere,” said Jekaterina Govina, fintech strategy coordinator at the central bank.
The Bank of Lithuania organized a roundtable discussion that both the Finance Ministry and Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT) attended.
“We gathered people from the banking sector, ICO people, FNTT officials and others and started talking. It’s necessary that banks speak to those who have carried out an ICO or those who convert cryptocurrencies into conventional money. A dialogue has been established and it remains to be seen where it will lead us,” Govina said.
Her words amount to a U-turn from the harsh message the central bank issued last October, when it encouraged banks to steer clear of the cryptocurrency business.
Since then, startups in this space have encountered significant difficulties when attempting to open bank accounts.
The Lithuanian Banks’ Association (LBA) also considers a dialogue necessary to establish ground rules for servicing cryptocurrency clients. However, it said that commercial banks would only allow such a business relationship if there is sufficient transparency so that they know where their clients’ money comes from.
“We are interested in speaking to everyone to better understand each other’s business models, but consumer protection, money laundering and terrorist financing prevention is a priority that must be ensured. We understand from the meeting that some cryptocurrency market participants cannot say where the money comes from. This is a serious problem, and they didn’t realize it was a problem,” LBA president Mantas Zalatorius told the Baltic News Service.
Despite all of the friction, the country remains a hotspot for ICOs, ranking after the Americans and the Chinese in this particular category of fundraising for startups. Establishing clear policies on the matter would only boost the market further.
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