A Bank Offers BTC and ETH – With Strings Attached

Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has launched a new service allowing retail customers in Spain to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Sounds like progress, but here’s the catch: while customers can buy and sell crypto, the assets are held in custody by the bank. So formally you “own” the coins, but you can’t actually use them. Let’s say you want to swap your BTC for SOL on rabbit.io to pay for something in the Solana ecosystem – tough luck. The bank won’t let you transfer your coins anywhere. Your only option is to sell them back to the bank.

The real issue isn’t just the strict custodial limits. It’s the mindset behind them. Traditional finance keeps pushing the idea that crypto exists solely for speculation.

A banking app isn’t a rabbit hole into the world of crypto – it’s a brick wall with a price chart painted on it. You don’t get real access to your assets. You don’t get to explore what crypto was actually made for. You just get a dead-end door with nothing behind it.