Bitcoin enters Britain via Barclays bank

Coinbase, a San Francisco based start-up that is one of the better-known wallet providers and owner of top-10 exchange, has struck a banking relationship with Barclays, beating other UK lenders that had previously shunned cryptocurrencies.

Coinbase’s spokesman said that its UK subsidiary had secured a bank account with Barclays, a deal which will simplify deposits and withdrawals for Coinbase’s UK customers, whose transactions were being processed  via an Estonian bank.

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said trading of Cryptocurrency exchanges should be regulated in a similar way to securities trading.

Although several banks haved shunned relationships with cryptocurrency start-ups, concered by perceived links to money laundering and terrorism financing, Barclay is the first UK major bank to venture into this partnership.

Zeeshan Feroz, Coinbase’s UK CEO said it wanted to work with a UK bank to give users “ a more familiar experience”.Coinbase founded in 2011, was a subject of several complaints from customers during last year’s trading over outages and slow withdrawals and launched an internal investigation into insider trading by employees.

HSBC, on the other hand has a complete ban on doing business with the money services sector.