The synthesis of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) by additive manufacturing has finally overcome the constraint in sample size characterizing glass formation using conventional copper mold casting. Unfortunately, BMGs fabricated by additive manufacturing, such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), show degraded mechanical properties with respect to the cast counterparts. This behavior is typically ascribed to manufacturing-induced defects, such as pores, while the effect of residual stresses/strains resulting from processing is often ignored. In this work, we explore this aspect by analyzing the microscale elastoplastic deformation of the Zr52.5Cu17.9Ni14.6Al10Ti5 BMG fabricated by LPBF and casting using high-energy X-ray diffraction. Our aim is to verify whether microscale residual stresses/strains in the LPBF material influence its macroscale mechanical behavior. The results show that the Poisson´s ratio of the LPBF metallic glass, derived from the strain evolution under load, is smaller than the cast counterpart, which explains the reduced plasticity of this material. The smaller Poisson´s ratio also significantly reduces the energy barriers for the activation of the shear transformation zones (STZs, the elemental units of plastic deformation in metallic glasses). Lower barriers imply that STZ activation in the LPBF glass is reached at lower stresses compared to the cast BMG, explaining the lower yield strength. A rather regular array of shear bands is generated in the LPBF metallic glass by cold rolling and the strain map across a shear band shows the same characteristics already observed in the cast BMG, implying that the same mechanism of shear band nucleation and propagation acts in both specimens. The equivalence of the shear band characteristics in the LPBF and cast BMGs offers the possibility to extend the existing ductilization strategies found effective in cast BMGs to the corresponding LPBF specimens.