> “HSBC has no appetite for direct exposure to virtual currencies and limited appetite to facilitate products or securities that derive their value from VCs (virtual currencies),” HSBC said in a statement.<p>But you wouldn't be? This is a product literally called "InvestDirect" where private individuals are buying stocks and assuming all the risk.<p>If you don't want to offer margin on virtual currency products, more power to you, that is your risk. But if customers are buying with cash, it seems pretty suspect for the bank to claim that is increasing the bank's risk exposure.<p>Honestly it wouldn't be the worst idea to have a "Net Neutrality" for brokers.
Is there a good up-to-date resource for understanding the current premium that MSTR has over its BTC holdings? The article says: "MicroStrategy said last week it owns around 91,579 bitcoins. Its holdings, worth around $5.5 billion according to a Reuters calculation, are equal to around 80% of its $6.8 billion market capitalisation."<p>Naively, this would imply a fairly low premium. But among other things, this doesn't account for fact that Microstrategy took on a lot of debt to buy their bitcoins. Essentially, I'd like to see an updated and more complete analysis like this: <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/microstrategy/comments/ltypps/sell_mstr_buy_gbtc_or_btcc/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/microstrategy/comments/ltypps/sell_...</a>. Does such a thing exist?
Next up, they'll have to ban Tesla, Square, Coinbase, Riot, etc. Where will they draw the line?<p>Pretty much the whole market has exposure to Bitcoin through SP500->Tesla at this point.
>The bank said its policy towards cryptocurrencies had been in place since 2018 and is kept under review. It could not immediately say which countries the ban applied to.<p>My guess is that it's just some middle manager blindly following directives from 2018 that haven't been updated. I can't think of any other reason why they'd ban it when everyone else is moving in the opposite direction.
My bet is that they are afraid of regulators fining them. The multi-billion dollar fines they received over the last few years constitutes a significant portion of their profits and has probably made them hyper-vigilant.<p>One of the unintended consequences of the Total Information Awareness / financial mass-surveillance AML/KYC movement is banks derisking at the expense of marginalized people and industries:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_absolutely_not_acceptable_for_makerdao/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO/comments/de0sys/kyc_is_abs...</a>
In related news, the bank will soon be renamed to HFSP Bank, in recognition of the crucial role it plays in reducing the risk of its clients making too much money.
> MicroStrategy said last week it owns around 91,579 bitcoins. Its holdings, worth around $5.5 billion according to a Reuters calculation, are equal to around 80% of its $6.8 billion market capitalisation.<p>Why would a software company buy this volume of this highly volatile crypto and put it on its balance sheet? Wouldn't the board object?