Partners Banka keeps three-quarters of the 2% markup on bitcoin that Anycoin holds

On the 500-crown minimum trade, the 2% markup comes to 10 crowns, 7.5 of them the bank's. On the 1-million-crown maximum it is 20,000 crowns, of which the bank keeps 15,000 ^[18]. That is three-quarters of every markup ^[17]. Anycoin keeps the other quarter, and according to Crowdfund Insider it is Anycoin that executes the orders and holds the coins ^[5]. The licence is Anycoin's as well: the partners call it the largest Czech crypto exchange, and the Czech National Bank authorised it under MiCA ^[6].

So the bank is a paid distribution channel for an exchange, and what it put into the deal is narrow. It supplied its app and its customers. Custody stays with Anycoin, the bank has no current plan to add other cryptocurrencies ^[11], and coins cannot be sent to an outside wallet, according to news.bitcoin.com ^[10].

The customer pays for the convenience at both ends. The fee applies whenever bitcoin is bought or sold ^[3], so a buyer pays the 2% ^[4] going in and again coming out, and bitcoin has to rise about 4.1% before the round trip breaks even (1 divided by 0.98 squared, minus one) ^[19]. Neither report gives Anycoin's fee for customers who trade on its own app, so the size of the premium for the bank's version cannot be measured.

Borkovec's pitch is about friction. "Bitcoin interests a large part of the Czech public today, but for many people the path to buying it remains needlessly complicated," he said ^[7]. The Ipsos survey the bank commissioned found something else: the main barriers were fear of risk and limited knowledge, not access ^[12]. It also found that 16% of people who had not invested missed the option of buying through a bank ^[13]. With 17% having invested personally ^[14], that comes to roughly 13% of respondents ^[20].

I see a few ways this goes. If the fear-and-knowledge barriers hold, volume stays small, and 1.5 points of a small number is a small fee line. If that 13% turns up, the bank earns a markup on a product it does not operate, and Borkovec's own advice to keep bitcoin to at most about 5% of a portfolio ^[8] caps how large each position should get. The third case belongs to Anycoin. The bank says Anycoin is the first Czech crypto firm to embed live trading directly in a commercial bank's systems ^[15], and Anycoin director Marek Kyrsch said cooperation with banks had long been expected, so the firm had prepared for it ^[16]. Each further bank on the same build would bring Anycoin volume without the cost of finding customers.

In my view the split shows where the two parties put the value. The customer relationship the bank already has is priced at three times the trading and safekeeping Anycoin performs ^[17]. The counter-case is that Anycoin's quarter is the better long-run seat if the integration repeats across banks. A second Czech bank launching on Anycoin's system at a split closer to even would show that Partners Banka's 1.5 points were the price of going first, and that the long-run value sits with the exchange.