Bitcoin As Banking’s Next Act?

The next-generation bank might be all about bitcoin.

That is, if the founder of the NextBank Project has his way. Dimitry Voloshinskiy, who was recently featured by TechCrunch, is on his way to making the first bitcoin-based bank.

Perhaps bitcoin and banking can work together?

But how? And is it legit? Those are the questions on the table so far.

“We are a 100 percent online bank. There is [r]emote account opening in majority cases, and we are thinking about the bitcoin community. We are happy to welcome bitcoin companies, traders and forward-looking entrepreneurs. NextBank is the first bitcoin-friendly bank,” Voloshinskiy said in the interview.

His team has raised $950,000 to date and is looking for more investors. It’s also trying to win over bitcoin enthusiasts.

“I hate banks as they are at the moment. I believe they [are] going to die soon,” Voloshinskiy said. Instead, his vision is to focus on FinTech that relies on bitcoin-based technology (blockchain), which he believes will attract bitcoin users. The goal is to launch more products next year.

NextBank claims that it allows customers to open an account online in under 20 minutes. They can do so by providing identification information, like a passport or utility bill, on the application. Its website says the bank will be open to customers in mid-2016 in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, China, Malaysia and Russia.

But there’s a hitch. Some reports, including TechCrunch’s, suggest that this could be a scam. There’s not enough evidence to suggest one way or another, but a Reddit forum has responses that are reportedly from NextBank Project’s legal team defending its legitimacy.