Bitcoin Forum

Breaking NEWS.

Hype.it, a digital only subsidiary bank on the Italian Banca Sella, started activating bitcoin wallet integration on their online platform, enabling more and more clients to bitcoin trading.

Hype is the fifth challenger Bank  in Europe, something like a bank-startup, directly challenging bigger banks, inside the banking system context. Another example of this kind of actors is N26. Hype is part of Banca Sella group and already has 1,200,000 clients in Italy.
Services are at the moment allowed only for Italian residents only.

First important news: these are real bitcoins, not CFD contracts like the one you can find in Revolut.
You can buy transfer and sell your bitcoins without limitations.

Some links below (Google translation of their website included)


Come creare il tuo portafoglio Bitcoin (https://support.hype.it/hc/it/articles/360040504452-Come-creare-il-tuo-portafoglio-Bitcoin)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob0e506b82e4cba2f0.png?1



Come comprare e vendere Bitcoin (https://support.hype.it/hc/it/articles/360040514772-Come-comprare-e-vendere-Bitcoin)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob6162ab212a34fc3e.png

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob241e376a933da007.png

Come scambiare Bitcoin (https://support.hype.it/hc/it/articles/360041012551-Come-scambiare-Bitcoin)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/16/blob9445f7d0fe7537c9.png


The * part refers to the fact that at the moment you can only SEND bitcoin you bought on Hype to a BTC address.
For the moment the opposite operation is not yet available.
Basically you cannot send your BTC to Hype and sell them, you can only sell BTC you previously bouth via HYPE and never left your account in the bank.

This functionality is currently being beta-tested and it is going to be implemented in the coming months.


Further informations:

Banca Sella: 1.2 million Italians discover Bitcoin thanks to Hype (https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2020/03/18/banca-sella-bitcoin-hype/)


Technically, all this has been made possible by the integration of Coinio SDK inside the Hype Ecosystem.

Vincenzo di Nicola (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=518182), Conio co-founder and co-CEO, is an user of this forum and described the custody schemes currently utilised by Hype in this serie of Medium articles:

Custody at Conio — part 1 (https://medium.com/conio/custody-at-conio-part-1-ddbe81a106ce)
Custody at Conio — part 2 (https://medium.com/conio/custody-at-conio-part-2-21e976f86384)

In addition he detailed an evolution to further enhance the multisig approach on this thread.

Multi-signature virtualization (Bitcoin and all ECDSA/EdDSA cryptocurrencies) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5219119.msg53653533#msg53653533)

These latest enhancements are currently being tested, and are going to be implemented in production at Conio.

I believe this is the very first time that a bank (especially a retail one) offers such a service to their customers.
Unfortunately it's only in Italy for now, but it paves the road for integration of crypto services in other banks worldwide.

This is massive, this will make it easier for less experienced people to be able to buy bitcoin without falling victim to phishing sites and online bad actors. This will no doubt drive their revenue and profit. A good step to adoption.

But the good thing that will come out of this is that if this bank will successfully served the Italians and will have a positive feedback from its users, other banks will follow. Not only in Italy or neighbouring countries but across the globe. it will be a good example if everything goes right here. I hope they really do attain what they are aiming here. it will also be very good to bitcoin adoption. This will contribute in the increase of btc demand.

It will be interesting to see if they start feeling any pressure from other banks due to FATF travel rule which is supposed to apply to cryptocurrency transactions too, that would spell the end transferring bitcoins without limitations through banks like these.

These are good points.
If this experiment will be successful i think it will snowball across other institutions in Europe.

It's not a mystery German banks were already beginning to look into this direction:

From 2020, the sale and custody of Bitcoin will be allowed to all German banks (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205355.msg53205886#msg53205886)

Country List: Regulation of Cryptocurrency Around the World  (https://www.loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/world-survey.php)

when many countries are trying to innovate with cryptocurrencies (like Italy above), Russia instead has a negative policy towards Bitcoin and other crypto assets (https://www.coindesk.com/bank-of-russia-says-new-digital-assets-bill-will-outlaw-crypto-trading-issuance)..

Finally something other than coronavirus, safe heaven, crash doom...

Now, it might sound weird, but where is the catch?
I know it has been a week with only bad news and even without it, I wouldn't have believed it that suddenly you can buy directly from your banking app some bitcoins (real bitcoins, as you mentioned not revolut CFD) and you can store them on your own wallet afterward.

So, as this is just too good to be true, where is the catch?  ;D
And why aren't more people interested in this, I mean, if it's what I believe it is, it's the biggest piece of good news in ages!
Forget ETF or regulations, this is what we've always asked for, direct purchase and bitcoins that your own!

Totally agree.
This is indeed a very BIG news.

But I reckon that attention span is short lately.

Apparently no one is looking at this, but it is a very important step. Not only from the technologial side of it (it is like cash app, but better) but it is a ture milestone on the European Banking regulatory framework where no one has done this yet.

I didn't expect this from an italian bank, albeit one of the most "digital friendly ones".

Also, the fact only Italian customers are allowed into this, doesn't helo spreading attention to the international audience.

Well, this is one of the things that pisses me off every damn time.
As a fellow European, I'm amazed at how people tend to ignore things that happen in largest economic zone or in the 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th country by GDP but they are screaming like madmen when some forgotten country in Africa or another 3rd world country finally has an ATM installed or taxi drivers accepting bitcoins.

You can't expect the price to grow without the people who have the money buying the coin and adoption won't come without people who have money to spend on purchases. And no matter how much some dislike this, the money are in US and EU, not in Venezuela, not in Iran not in Zimbabwe.

Back to this, I'm guessing I found a small catch but there are two paragraphs involved and it's a bit contradicting:


that would lead me to believe that you can only send bitcoins to another customer of the same bank but..


this leads me to believe you're not restricted to that.

Anyhow, this is one f* great step for BTC

As far as I know, the bitcoins are not restricted to specific addresses, Probably they wanted to stress out sending bitcoin is "easy".

Maybe @vincenzo can shed some light on this aspect.

Really good news for those who want to buy BTC in a very simple way without having to have any technical knowledge, because I assume the whole technical matter/security of the wallet is the responsibility of the bank. Does this mean that the user does not really have any control over his private keys, nor can he make a personal backup? As I said, the idea is not bad at all, on the contrary, but some do not look favorably on such a combination of banks and crypto, if we take into account our famous saying "not your private keys, not your coins".

What interests me is whether it is possible to send BTC from the app to another wallet, or all operations are limited only to app?

IMO, I'm afraid the Italian Government would notice this disruption. Unless the founders behind the start-up bank are powerful enough to control the government. Doing these kinds of moves are scary for traditional banks. Their businesses are being disrupted big time by cryptocurrency.

Corporate Banks are the ones who produce the majority of finance. If their business is gone, economic problems may persist, I guess.

The Italy is suffering and people above 80 are left to die , the world is getting worse because many countries are hiding the cases with Corona Virus because they don't want the people to panic and the other countries make fun of them .
So Italy needs all the help they can get . Bitcoins are doing what they can for the people and banks have come to realize this . I think all countries should do that one way or the other so that they will be able to give people more power and they don't have to rush to the banks anymore.

We made the official announcement yesterday.

Here's an article by Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/23034/italian-bank-releases-bitcoin-wallet-despite-coronavirus


Unfortunately I have to agree with you on this.
We just gave seamless and true access to Bitcoin to over 1 Million people in Italy, and I believe we just wrote a piece of crypto History. Still, the news went almost unnoticed.

Well, who cares. I'm ecstatic that we're moving forward in the right direction, and helping to spread mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

I understand what you say. As @fillippone mentioned, I invite you to read the 3-series posts of the Conio custody solution, which where I extensively speak about our architecture and the reasons behind it:

Custody at Conio — part 1: https://medium.com/conio/custody-at-conio-part-1-ddbe81a106ce
Custody at Conio — part 2: https://medium.com/conio/custody-at-conio-part-2-21e976f86384
Custody at Conio — part 3: https://medium.com/conio/custody-at-conio-part-3-623292bc9222

Part 1 addresses our multi-signature approach, which has now also in the integration with Hype.

There goes my question on how would it be possible for the the technically-challenged people to utilize bitcoin in times of need in Italy. Though it may have sprouted on the toughest of times, it still is a great help and a move towards the right direction which is a way most traditional banks are scared to take. I just hope that the Italian government would not take this as a challenge against the traditional banking industry but rather see it as a different avenue and a novel approach in banking and finance.

With regards to the security, I'm sure this is well thought out, and that the wallet provider will be held liable should hacks arise and target the wallets. If that's the case, it should eliminate a layer of doubt about the saying 'not your keys, not your coin' which is still relevant to remembwr these days.

Corporate banks are those called commercial banks. These banks are those really assigned to assist the people interns of servicing and loans. They are between the government and the people. Over the world therefore, the government do support them to be alive because of their role and so, the Italian government won't allow them to be isolated from their role whether in fiat or digital business.

Yeah, after all, who cares!!!!
I'm well passed the stage where I think the hype is good for anything else than a small bump in price.
We've always needed serious stuff, not vapourware stuff that won't materialize, not promises that bitcoin will do that and that and save humankind or anything else.

What we need is not thousands of tweets but real-world usage, easy ways to buy stuff with BTC, easy ways to buy BTC to send and store, real growth based on usage and accessibility. Without this, we won't be living long on empty promises and hype.

Anyhow, congratulations on achieving this, I hope the rest of the EU block follows!!!

I dare to say that THIS is exactly what I think as an easy way to buy and use your coins.
What is better than a complete integration of Bitcoin in your mobile banking app?

Holy hellening! THis is amazing news! Who would have thought, that in midst of a globally spread pandemic, something like this would happen. This might genuinely help the people in Italy who are having issues with sending or receiving money.

Thank you @vincenzo, thank you for bringing in change in this time of need. If I may suggest, try gamifying the whole experience, as in run some sort of an Online giveaway, or drop in some amount of bitcoin to your Hype users, it will be really helpful for the people in need, and will also help you gain some 'traction.

And please, please try to make this global, oh what I would do to trade, and exchange bitcoin within my bank account itself. oh.

Another milesrone for cryptocurrency industry, I hope that when this pandemic is over we can further innovate this application. This is a very good start-up for people to trust the efficiency of cryptocurrency.

FATF recommendations come down to ensuring that the user is identified if the transaction amount exceeds one thousand euros. In my opinion, in this case, each user of the services offered is a client of the bank and the bank has enough data to identify its customers. Therefore, there is no need for any additional restrictions. The beginning is very interesting. I hope that banks will soon switch to services in other types of cryptocurrencies, since payments in bitcoins are not always convenient due to the high cost of the transaction.

I just like how the bank looks like, it’s just very simple and the design isn’t clustered like most bank apps you will see, just a minimum design and cool at the same time. 1.2 millions clients is not a small number, at least half of those that are using that app that are not into cryptocurrency would develop interest as time goes on and they will try to purchase and see how it works.

Also, maybe when they try it out for the first time they will start gaining interest in it. This is still new, if the government should approve the bigger banks, they might start integrating Bitcoin wallets and offering the services as well. New German law that was passed around February was said to allow such.

I'm truly impressed! It's quite a leap from what banks were telling about Bitcoin some years ago.
I don't know how big the fees are, but I think that's worth it for many (which don't know what Binance, Bitstamp, Coinbase are).



Indeed. Well said, both of you.

@stompix I’ll second that as bitcoin is a currency and it should be used like a currency, and I believe that the EU shall try and implement this once the virus starts to slow down.


@pugman indeed this news is like finding a pool of water in the sand, considering we’re only hearing bad news constantly from Italy and I too would love to use an app where my banking and bitcoin wallet is integrated.

Yeah but what if the user sends the bitcoins to some address belonging to someone who's not a customer at this bank?

I hope they won't be pressured to introduce restrictions where the user can transfer their bitcoins.

A little bit of update on the supported functions.
For the moment you cannot RECEIVE bitcoin on your Hype ACCOUNT, but you can only send to BTC addresses.
I guess this has to do with KYC/AML regulations.
This function is going to be implemented in the coming months.
Very curious on how this will be implemented, and which practices will they be using.

Will they pass the Giacomo Zucco's acid test?

A Treatise On Bitcoin And Privacy Part 1: A Match Made In The Whitepaper (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/a-treatise-on-bitcoin-and-privacy-part-1-a-match-made-in-the-whitepaper)

In this trying times Bitcoin should be most convenient to use given the fact that it doesn't require physical transaction and could possibly one of the reasons of transferring of infectious diseases and with the worsening of the economy people and the government should protect their citizens wealth in case the pandemic disease takes time to get solve.

Bitcoin is one of the choice but sadly, using bitcoin in everyday transaction is so hassle, it's transaction speed is so slow! and the fee Is quite not practical for micro-transaction. Using bitcoin for large transaction is okay but for canned transaction t's not. using cryptocurrency might not be usable for normal people in their everyday life so still, in this pandemic people are still using fiat considering that t's not hassle. Sadly, people want fast transaction and that's it.

You are so right dude. Actual bitcoin (and other crypto's) transactions make it obvious - cryptocurrencies are not ready to replace current fiat currencies we use daily

It is very interesting that the integration of bitcoin into the banking sector occurs at a time when many markets are closed due to coronavirus. This is very good news when we read about the integration of bitcoin into the real sector. And those banks that will do this first will get an advantage over the rest.