HSBC Is Not Into Bitcoin As An Asset Class Citing Volatility

HSBC is not into Bitcoin because of its volatility as the banking giant announced it is not interested in the asset as we can see more in our latest Bitcoin news today.

The bank stopped allowing purchases of Microstrategy shares and HSBC is not interested in BTC and has no plans of launching a crypto trading desk or offer cryptocurrencies to its customers with the CEO Noel Quinn saying:

“Given the volatility, we are not into Bitcoin as an asset class, if our clients want to be there then of course they are, but we are not promoting it as an asset class within our wealth management business.”

HSBC’s announcement came at a time when BTC came under fire and in the past month, the price dropped with drops of 26% and 35% in the past two weeks. Today’s price of $38,000 is still far away from the BTC all-time high of about $64,500. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk announced that the car manufacturer reversed course on BTC and wasn’t accepting crypto payments anymore due to concerns over its carbon footprint as he tweeted:

“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”

Three major payment companies in China reiterated their support for china’s 2017 ban on payments companies engaging in crypto transactions and putting more pressure on BTC while causing its price to drop. Bitcoin’s price volatility proves to be too much for HSCB and throw the hat into the ring. But this is not the first time that HSCB took a cautious stance on BTC. HSBC  took a stand against Microstrategy which is a software company led by Michael Saylor who became one of the loudest supporters of Bitcoin after investing millions in the cryptocurrency.

Since 2020, Microstrategy consistently invested in BTC and Saylor likened the cryptocurrency to digital gold but not everyone shared his enthusiasm. A message from HSBC popped up online adding that new purchases or transfers out of Microstrategy won’t be allowed.

As previously reported, HSBC will not allow trades to invest in Microstrategy stocks because most of the company’s stocks are in Bitcoin. HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world that already blocked transfers from crypto exchanges to client accounts as it took an anti-crypto policy.

Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/hsbc-is-not-into-bitcoin-as-an-asset-class-citing-volatility/