- Savings banks will enable Bitcoin trading in their app from summer 2026.
- Podcaster Tröster believes the decision at the time was correct and puts the “50 million customer” headlines into perspective.
At the start of the year, an X post by German Bitcoin podcaster Daniel “Loddi” Tröster sparked a debate about the savings banks’ change of course in crypto trading: After a “non-recommendation” in the Sparkasse Association 2021/22, Bitcoin is to be available directly in the Sparkasse app from summer 2026, as CNF reported on Monday.
Now Bitcoin trading is “bankable”
Comforter, known for the “Sound Money Bitcoin Podcast”, wrote on January 2nd, the decision against Bitcoin in the savings bank world at the time was “right”. He refers to a project at the German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV), which examined the introduction of crypto trading within the savings bank organization in 2021/22.
Result: a “non-recommendation”. At the same time, Tröster emphasizes that the DSGV cannot prohibit individual savings banks from trading Bitcoin; “There was only a clear rejection through the opinions and statements of individual people.”
Tröster explained that he was involved in the project at the time and provides a reasoning that has less to do with Bitcoin itself than with the market infrastructure.
“I was part of the project at the time and the result was of course disappointing. Looking back, it was the right decision! But that wasn’t because of Bitcoin, but rather because of the Bitcoin industry,” he wrote.
From his point of view, there were no “such solid providers for trading and storing Bitcoin at an institutional level” in Germany in 2022.
This situation has now changed. Tröster argues that today “3.5 years later” the necessary service provider landscape is in place: trading, custody, on-chain analysis and market data that banks need for monitoring market abuse and for “market fairness”.
At the same time, Tröster contradicted the widely-used headlines that savings banks would now serve “50 million” customers across the board. His note:
“PS: Only the customers of the savings banks participating at the start can use DekaBank’s offer – not 50 million people.”
Specifically, Tröster commented on an X-Post from Smart Money Crypto (@HugotoCrypto), which outlined the development as a strategic U-turn by a conservative banking group:
“The Sparkasse talked you out of Bitcoin – only to sell it to you later at a higher price,” the post says. And further: “This is not adoption. This is capitulation. They don’t get in because they believe in Bitcoin. They get in because they are losing customers.”
The post also works with a strong point: “Grandma and grandpa will soon be able to buy Bitcoin like stocks. No own wallet. No seed phrase. No real ownership. Bitcoin with training wheels.”
Tröster’s argument goes in a different direction: the Sparkasse app in particular, which “wins practically every test of banking apps”, can make the purchase “much easier and with fewer hurdles” than with crypto exchanges. This is less a Bitcoin revolution than product logic and at the same time an indirect indication that UX, compliance and institutional process chains are now considered crucial variables.
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