Bitcoin Friendly Bank

Photo by Ramiro Collazo via Unsplash

The U.S. territory of San Juan, Puerto Rico has its first financial bank that is dedicated to cryptocurrency. The San Juan Mercantile Bank & Trust (SJMBT) accepted its first client deposit in April 2019. Licensed in March 2019 SJMBT is a fully operational bank that caters to cryptocurrency investors.

SJMBT is not insured by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) but reportedly it will hold clients assets at undisclosed banks that are; through correspondent accounts. Correspondent accounts are established through bilateral agreements between two banks.
Digital assets will be held in the same way with approved digital asset custodians.

The bank is a part of Mercantile Global Holdings which will soon launch. According to their Linkedin page Mercantile Global Holdings “Mercantile Global Holdings (MGH) and its affiliates are building an integrated trading and banking platform to enable customers to efficiently trade, bank, and administer digital assets.”

SJMBT and affiliate entities are huge for crypto investors in the U.S. because there has been much resistance from the government concerning the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This has been witnessed with political leaders like congressman Brad Sherman who called on Congress to outlaw cryptocurrency in the U.S. because he sees cryptocurrency as a threat to the rule of America. SJMBT and hopefully others like it to come will allow crypto holders to more freely trade and bank cryptocurrency (if we so choose to) like the “free” citizens that we are constitutionally declared to be.

I am interested in seeing how well this bank will do especially now with so many governments around the world opposed to, or on the fence about cryptocurrency. Just recently Russia has been debating imposing fines on crypto mining and they’re struggling with crypto regulation as are other countries including the U.S. With so many governments in limbo about crypto I am curious to see if more banks like SJMBT will pop up? will people from other countries make their way to Puerto Rico just for SJMBT? or will a bank like this get smothered by the government and eventually wither and die?

Photo by Jennifer Chen via Unsplash