Today, Zodia Custody announced that it conducted trials with DMG Blockchain’s Blockseer Petra solution, making it possible to route cryptocurrency transactions to compliant green mining pools. Additionally, there’s a plan to add risk ratings to crypto transaction counterparties.
UK-based Zodia Custody was founded by Standard Chartered in association with Northern Trust.
One of the biggest institutional challenges with cryptocurrency is the ability to know with whom they’re transacting. While there may be KYC at most cryptocurrency exchanges, the crypto-asset can pass through many parties afterward. Blockseer Petra doesn’t yet solve this one but has plans to.
Apart from knowing counterparties, another issue is understanding which organization is mining the blocks for cryptocurrency transactions.
“The crypto asset industry is often associated with high environmental impacts, particularly in relation to energy consumption. Further, the concept of unknown participants mining blocks is outside of many institutions’ risk appetite,” said Maxime De Guillebon, CEO, Zodia Custody.
“Zodia Custody, in an industry first with DMG’s Petra platform, is able to address these concerns and offer our clients the option to route transfers to OFAC-compliant, ‘green’ mining pools. Petra will also give comfort to our institutional clients that their crypto transfers are being processed by known, sanctioned complaint parties. This represents a major milestone towards the institutional adoption of crypto assets.”
We’ve asked about who classifies the mining pools as green and based on which criteria but didn’t receive a response in time for publication.
DMG is a listed Canadian blockchain firm that provides hosting facilities for cryptocurrency miners and compliance solutions such as Blockseer.
In July, Zodia received regulatory approval from the UK’s FCA. And last month, it inked a custody deal with UK-based Pure Digital, which plans to launch a crypto trading solution targeting banks. In 2020, Standard Chartered invested in Swiss custody technology firm Metaco which also counts Northern Trust, BBVA and DBS Bank as clients.
Standard Chartered is one of several banks launching digital asset custody solutions. Others include BNY Mellon that’s partnering with custody technology firm Fireblocks, and Nomura has a joint venture Komainu, which today announced a deal with Japanese firm Crypto Garage.
