Today Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Bank has applied to German regulator BaFin for a digital asset custody licence. David Lynne mentioned the news during a conference earlier this week. He heads the Corporate Bank.
Additionally, HSBC’s CEO told Fortune that it is working on a digital asset custody solution.
The news is not a huge surprise as Deutsche Bank invested in Taurus in February and at the time it said it planned to integrate its digital asset custody solution.
Deutsche Bank has been involved in various blockchain initiatives. Our sources told us the bank is preparing to join Partior, the cross border interbank payments blockchain platform that includes JP Morgan, Standard Chartered and DBS Bank. Its asset management arm DWS has partnered Galaxy for digital asset ETPs. And the bank trialed tokenized funds on a public blockchain.
Meanwhile, the biggest recent news in the institutional digital asset custody space was Ripple’s acquisition of technology provider Metaco. Metaco is the tech partner to several banks, including Standard Chartered’s Zodia Custody, Citi, BNP Paribas Securities Services, SocGen Forge, DekaBank and DZ Bank.
