Portuguese banks have started closing accounts of local cryptocurrency exchanges, which is also strange because the Mediterranean country has a reputation for being a particularly crypto-friendly place so far.
Some Portuguese banks have closed the accounts of cryptocurrency exchanges there without any explanation. One of the largest stock exchanges in the country, the For CryptoLoja For example, his accounts were terminated last week in two banks, Banco Santander and Banco Comercial Portugues. Prior to this, several small banks in Portugal acted similarly, without announcing or justifying the decision.
The Bloomberg According to a report on Wednesday, Banco Comercial only said it was obligated to notify the authorities of any “suspicious transaction”, which could lead to some accounts being banned. However, CriptoLoja CEO Pedro Borges said that during the operation of the company, all stipulated rules were followed, and this makes blocking accounts particularly incomprehensible. By the way, CriptoLoja is the first approved crypto exchange in Portugal.
There is no official explanation, banks simply do not want to cooperate with crypto companies
Not only was CriptoLoja affected by the blocking of accounts, two other crypto exchanges in the country also suffered a similar fate to Pedro Borges.
Coin accounts were banned earlier this year, and he has not been able to open new accounts since. According to the founder of the exchange, Pedro Guimaraes, there is no official explanation, some banks have just said that they do not want to cooperate with crypto companies. The product manager of another affected exchange, Luso Digital Assets, Riccardo Felipe, also confirmed that some of the company’s bank accounts had been closed.
Locking accounts of various crypto companies is not new in countries that oppose the use of cryptocurrencies. Several accounts related to cryptocurrency have been banned in Nigeria, for example, and as we mentioned, last year the central bank of the African country also banned the most popular crypto payment application in Nigeria.
However, the current Portuguese case is particularly strange, given that Portugal is among the crypto-friendly countries and has introduced many pro-crypto measures, including not having to tax cryptocurrencies.
