According to the Federal Ministry of Finance, at least six German banks are trading in cryptocurrencies. The Federal Ministry responds to a small request from a member of the parliamentary group Die Linke. It is not the first request for Bitcoin & Co. in the current German Bundestag.

The Saarland member of parliament Thomas Lutze sits since 2009 for the faction The Left in the Bundestag. He works primarily in the Committee on Economic and Energy Affairs and also acts as the political spokesman for the group. In this function, he made a small request to the Federal Ministry of Finance and wanted to know, among other things, how many German banks act with cryptocurrencies. This reports the news agency Reuters .

A small request

The small request is an instrument in parliamentary democracy. It serves to control the government and is therefore used primarily by the opposition parties. In a small question, parliamentarians can ask specific questions that the governing parties must answer to the best of their knowledge and belief. They use all the information that is available to them.

In the case of the current small request by the left-wing MP, the Federal Ministry of Finance relied on information from the BaFin. This supervises the said financial institutions and thus understands which banks are trading in cryptocurrencies. In particular, the Ministry of Finance did not name the banks. Instead, it just said that BaFin does not currently see any reason to suspect banks of violating rules.

Cryptocurrencies in the interests of members of the Bundestag

However, this is not the first small cryptocurrency question that has been submitted to the federal government. Since the beginning of the year there has been at least one small request from each opposition faction. The request of the FDP member Frank Schäffler revolves around Initial Coin Offerings, the Green MP Oliver Krischer was interested in the impact of Bitcoin mining on the energy consumption. A comparatively short small request was also made recently by the deputy Lothar Maier of the AfD faction. It dealt with the issue of consumer protection in highly speculative cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies thus encounter party-wide interest of the people’s representatives in the Bundestag. The federal government itself has dealt with the topic. In February, the blockchain and cryptocurrencies made it into the coalition agreement between the Union and the SPD. Among other things, it promises the development of a blockchain strategy and the regulation of cryptocurrencies. Now you are also discussing — a good sign for the German crypto-economy.