Bitcoin Forum

Hello everyone, i would like to ask a quick help and some heads up from you.

One of my clients which we (company where i work) are about to incorporate his company here in Hong Kong, asked us to assist him in opening an offshore bank account in Europe, not to mention that this bank should be friendly with clients who engage business and their turnover with BTC. Sadly here in HK no chance banks are willing to assist for the reasons you guys may know. I will try to provide some details (really few so far haha) in case may be to help for your heads;

- Ltd. HK based company
- Director owns EU passport
- As i v realized so far, he s providing BTC exchange services and the daily cash turnover will be pretty high with hundreds of bank transactions por day
- A corporate bank account is needed

Our\His needs;

- An european bank willing to open an offshore account for a HK based company
- Following bank should be "friendly" with businesses with BTC involved, providing a related platform fund transfers and IB banking of course

Basically that s all i got on hand so far, apologies if may not be enough but some help or suggest will be really appreciated, especially if there is some bank insider over here, we will be happy to co-operate bringing you the client.

Considering, i have just approcahed him tho, since we will get back to him with further infos in a few, that an option may be Latvia, but of course you may correct me.

Thank you sooooo much in advance to everyone who s gonna read and post


Cheers

At the moment there is no country which legalized bitcoins. The banking system is very bureaucratic. To accept bitcoin need the decision of all EU countries. It's not real. I heard that in the Netherlands you can pay with bitcoins utilities, but I am sure that this scheme enabled the online exchange. On account of the company should come only Euros. Moreover you will be required to convert their bitcoins to determine the amount of your income and determine tax rates.

Fidor Bank in Germany?
One HK bank which has offices in Europe?
Or maybe Norvik. Don't know how nice they are to BTC holders but they're modern, and trying to seduce entrepreneurs in the Baltic states.

I represent a Cayman Islands chartered/based bank that would perhaps suit your clients needs? PM if you are interested in me making the introduction. Cheers

I'm not sure about the offshore aspect, but there are EU banks dealing with Bitcoin business though they may not welcome new relationships.

As far as I know Coinbase's EUR operations use LHV bank in Estonia - https://www.lhv.ee/en/

LHV also seem to be crypto friendly in general - https://www.coindesk.com/lhv-bank-exec-we-support-bitcoins-values/

That would be my first port of call.

I'm not sure if Kraken's main bank is Fidor, but they do integrate them for customers. The UK version of Fidor doesn't offer business accounts. Maybe the German one does.

Many thanks for replying me mate, just to make sure in case i did not express myself correctly, basically this guy/company is providing his\its cutomerswith BTCs, in exchange of cash, about the tax purpose calculation is a good point i know. I also heard about netherlands that may be an option for our case but still not sure also considering we are all oversea

Thanks for your suggests, about the HK banks which have branches in EU honestly we still did not think about it, as we experienced here in HK, they are not friendly with businesses with BTC involved, so we assumed also in EU they would not, but in somehow this guy has to find a way out hahah.. Germany well the thing is that the bank should be providing with an offshore account, i don t think that would be possible in Germany, ofc correct me in case..

Will definitely tell him about this option today and let you know in case he would be fine with that, many thanks appreciated

thank you mate, sounds like a good option but i wonder whether you can easily go offshore in Estonia, i m not so practical about banking in EU unfortunately, i m getting deeper now with Estonia, thanks again

Why don't you try Falcon Private Bank? It is a Swiss bank, and very friendly with bitcoins. They have gone as far as offering to buy bitcoins for their clients. Investors can ask their asset managers to purchase and store bitcoin on their behalf, a first for conventional banks. They may take your business.

I don't understand why you need a realtor to buy and store bitcoins? The functions of the Bank lies elsewhere. If they deal only with those functions you listed then I think they will not have customers. It seems to me that the usual for us, the banking system cannot coexist with bitcoin.

In my opinion, the perfect offshore banking solution is a pier to pier system based on the blockchain which transmits FIAT currency from bank to bank. This would operate outside of SWIFT and Fedwire, and thus avoid the fees.

The German version of Fidor actually does offer business accounts. However, they seem
to be mainly catering to small startups and small businesses and I highly doubt that they would
be offering their services to a high-volume Bitcoin exchange that is incorporated in Hong Kong.

I don´t think that you will find what you are looking for with the current regulatory environment in
Europe. Bitfinex seems to have found a workaround by sharing their bank account at a small
Polish bank with cex.io, but I´m not sure how long this relationship will/can last.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) told the European Union (EU) banks - which it regulates - to shun bitcoins until the EBA develops safeguards to protect their integrity.

This post is for me? :)  Please, send me the details at contact mail :  krypto.business@protonmail.com ! Thank you ! Have a nice day !
P.S. I tryied to message you but I cant ...maybe you are offline !

I've heard some people talking about how Portugal has very low taxes for crypto gains, so they may be what you call "crypto friendly"?

As far as within the European union, I don't think so. You are going to get scrutinized heavily with that volume of transactions. You will probably need an special permission as someone that makes a living of this activity of exchanging currencies which changes depending on jurisdictions so expect a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy.

A lot of online entrepreneurs seem to be looking at Estonia too to establish their fiscal residence so they may be Bitcoin friendly?