Israel Discount Bank to Offer Bitcoin and Ethereum Trading in Its App Starting November 26
According to disclosures on Israel Discount Bank’s website, starting November 26 the bank will allow individual customers to directly buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum in its banking app, without needing to open a separate digital wallet or an overseas exchange account. The bank said this is the first such service in the Israeli banking sector.
The service is only available to Israeli residents aged 18 and older who have opened a securities account. The fee for each transaction is 2% of the transaction amount. For the first half-year after launch, custody fees will be waived; afterward, they will be charged at 0.25% per quarter. The assets are held through custody infrastructure provided by Fireblocks, and customers’ assets are stored in wallets provided by the bank, while proceeds from sales can be deposited directly into the bank account.
The service allows customers to manage crypto assets together with stocks, bonds and other investments, and supports offsetting capital gains and losses within the portfolio to enable withholding tax at source. The bank said this move is an initial step toward building digital currency technology infrastructure.
Original source: en.globes.co.il/en/article-discount-bank-to-offer-cryptocurrency-trading-1001562928
ABAB AI Insight
Traditional banks have long kept cryptoasset trading separate on external exchanges because of anti-money-laundering and source-of-funds checks. Israel Discount Bank is embedding buy, sell and hold functions into its existing app, using Fireblocks custody, so customers do not need to hold their own private keys or open overseas accounts, and transactions remain within the banking system. This model brings crypto assets into the securities-account management framework and links them to tax offsetting.
Compared with routes that rely on external platforms, in-bank trading reduces compliance friction for funds moving in and out, but fees and custody charges create explicit costs. The adoption of institutional-grade custody infrastructure such as Fireblocks by banks reflects a shift in the custody layer from user self-custody to bank-controlled wallets. Similar integration has already emerged in other markets, and capital is more focused on whether crypto assets can be unified with traditional investment portfolios in pricing and tax treatment.
This launch moves crypto assets from external accounts into the bank-account system, which may improve retail customers’ convenience in holding them, while the bank gains trading and custody revenue. The beneficiaries are qualified customers who already have securities accounts, as well as Fireblocks, which provides the custody infrastructure; overseas exchanges, by contrast, face some diversion of retail traffic. The structural change is that the bank is transforming crypto assets from a high-friction external channel into an internal securities-like asset, concentrating funds flow and tax handling within the banking system.
Cognition Law
Embedding trading in the bank moves crypto assets from external accounts into a regulated securities framework.
Custody shifts from user-held private keys to bank-controlled wallets, lowering the operational threshold while retaining fee costs.
Tax offsetting and convenient funds movement are driving the migration of retail crypto holdings from exchanges to bank accounts.