Romania’s National Bank (BNR) has noticed the growing interest the public has in virtual currencies (“also known as cryptocurrencies”) and issued a warning, saying that they continue to be “speculative assets, very volatile and extremely risky,” thus having a high potential of registering financial losses for investors.
Still, BNR mentioned that the risks associated with owning and trading virtual currencies “do not represent at this moment a threat to the financial stability in Romania.”
The current regulations in Romania don’t offer any special provisions that would stop credit institutions from offering account services to providers of exchanges, mentions Romania-Insider.com.
Nevertheless, BNR’s recommendation for credit institutions is that they should follow the standard measures to know customers and manage risks in order to avoid terrorist financing or money laundering. Credit institutions also have to take into consideration the risks they are exposing themselves to.
The CEO and co-founder of LDV Exchange, one of the major crypto exchanges in the country, Marius Morra, addressed the comments made by BNR: “Even if they [BNR] still emanate an air of mistrust,” the current rules and these comments “do not forbid banks to work with us.”