Today Standard Chartered said it received a licenses for digital asset custody form the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA). It previously announced plans for the offering last May.
While it wasn’t mentioned today, the solution is to be powered by its digital asset joint venture, Zodia Custody, and will initially support Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Its inaugural client is Brevan Howard Digital, which is quite a big deal, as we’ll explain.
“The launch of our digital asset custody offering represents a pivotal moment not just for Standard Chartered, but for the financial services industry,” said Bill Winters, Group CEO of Standard Chartered Bank. “We firmly believe that digital assets are not merely a passing trend, but a fundamental shift in the fabric of finance. With this new service, we are strategically positioning ourselves at the forefront of this next evolution in the custody business.”
The Brevan Howard deal
Alan Howard, the co-founder of Brevan Howard is a prolific investor in the digital asset sector and has done several deals with Nomura’s digital asset arm Laser Digital. He also invested in Komainu the digital asset custody joint venture from Nomura, Ledger and Coinshares.
The reason the Standard Chartered custody deal is notable is one would expect Brevan Howard Digital to use Komainu in Dubai. It’s not like Komainu doesn’t have a presence in Dubai – it has a custody license from Dubai’s VARA. Of course, Alan Howard and Brevan Howard Digital are separate entities.
However, this custody deal is not the first association between Standard Chartered and Mr Howard’s entities. He also owns Elwood, which recently sold its crypto OTC desk to Standard Chartered’s Zodia Markets.
Laser Digital & SC Ventures digital asset strategies
Standard Chartered conducts most of its digital asset ventures via SC Ventures. For a long time we’ve noticed that SC Ventures and Nomura’s Laser Digital have similar strategies. So much so, that we sometimes get confused between them. Hence, Mr Howard’s association with both is unsurprising.
Not only do they both have digital asset custody joint ventures, but they also have similarly named digital asset fund initiatives, even if the strategies are quite different. SC Ventures’s fund initiative is Libeara, whereas Nomura’s Laser Digital is associated with the Libre fund tokenization protocol. Libre went live by tokenizing a Brevan Howard fund.
