It seems that thanks to fast transactions and low fees, cryptocurrencies managed to outperform traditional banking. Bitbond is an online German bank that sees the future of cryptos as bright as possible. They are currently using Bitcoin for international payments, ditching the SWIFT services.
SWIFT is a messaging platform that is used by financial institutions in order to send data regarding monetary transactions and operations via a standard coding system. The system is robust, it gets updated continuously and all its advantages have led to SWIFT becoming the top choice for interbank payment processing even if sometimes it takes hours or days to complete transactions. This is why it’s a really significant accomplishment for the crypto world to have Bitcoin defeat this system.
Bitbond provides benefits to customers via cryptos
Bitbond chose to use cryptocurrencies especially because they don’t trigger the long waiting time issue until the transaction if finalized. So, regarding waiting times, cryptos definitely defeat the traditional waiting system. SWIFT also involves high fees that have to be paid due to a large number of intermediaries. When using cryptos, the fees are much smaller or even non-existent.
In an interview for Reuters TV, Bitbond founder Radoslav Albrecht stated the key advantages for banks to start using blockchain instead of traditional systems such as SWIFT.
“Traditional money transfers are relatively costly due to currency exchange fees and can take up to a few days… With Bitbond, payments work independently of where customers are. Via internet it is very, very quick and the fees are low,” he stated.
Blockchain is slowly but surely making its way into traditional banks
In order to overcome the issues that are associated with the fluctuating value of cryptocurrencies, Bitbond clients hold the loans in digital tokens such s Bitcoin only for a few seconds, and then they’re exchanged back into the currency of their own country. They also avoid the crypto’s exchange rate, and they can be 100 percent sure that the amount in fiat currency will be the same even if the transfer has a fluctuating value.
Currently, Germany boasts the highest number of Bitcoin nodes in the world, 1939. Number one is the U.S. with 2538 nodes.
The use of blockchain technology by traditional banks is definitely showing a great future in which cryptocurrencies will eventually be adopted.