Commerzbank has applied to Bafin for a license to store digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
This makes it the first major German financial institution to officially apply for such a license.
Deutsche Bank has also been working on a solution for digital currencies for months.
That's also reasonable: You don't have to see cryptocurrencies as a serious investment or believe that they aren't that highly speculative after all.
The fact is, on the one hand, that digital currencies are not prohibited.
And on the other hand, that many young people act with digital currencies as a matter of course.
If the established banks do not want to lose these customers to young fintechs who already offer such trading, they have to get serious about crypto trading.
And it's better if they're trading with a Bafin-approved lender than doing it in a legal gray area with marketplaces that are under investigation in many places -- like Binance -- that are already banned in the UK.
The savings banks show how it can't be done: there, people argue publicly about the pros and cons, as if one hand didn't know what the other was doing.
It was similar with digital payments: First there was an argument, then you wanted it, then you were too late, and finally you had to rely on Apple – and say goodbye to part of the business.
This shouldn't happen again.