Your Volksbank's Crypto Licence: Why You Have to Check Custody Separately

If your Volksbank or Raiffeisenbank has recently started offering crypto, it holds a BaFin authorisation for it. In most cases that authorisation covers exactly one service: the execution of your buy and sell orders. It does not cover the custody of your coins. Who holds the key to your holdings is not stated in your bank's authorisation, and that is precisely the question you should settle before your first purchase.

The occasion is a shift in the European register that has become clear over recent weeks. Between August 12 and September 10, 2026, according to an analysis by the trade service The Industry Spread published on September 10, 16 new entries were added to the CASP register of the European securities regulator ESMA. Fourteen of them were German cooperative banks. The specialist service MiCA Watch arrives at the same picture for the same period and now counts 31 local banks with a MiCA authorisation, each with a single service and each for Germany only.

What a CASP authorisation under MiCAR actually permits

CASP stands for crypto-asset service provider: a company that commercially offers one of the crypto services listed in the EU's MiCAR regulation and needs an authorisation from the national supervisor to do so. MiCAR is the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, in force since the end of 2024; the competent authority in Germany is BaFin.