Katherine Ross

German bank Commerzbank is the first “full-service bank” to receive a crypto custody license, according to a press release on Wednesday.



The bank was granted the license under the German Banking Act (KWG).&nbsp;



Commerzbank can now offer digital asset services, and the bank plans to “establish a secure and reliable platform with full regulatory compliance to support its institutional clients by providing custody for crypto assets based on blockchain technology.”



“We have achieved an important milestone. This highlights our ongoing commitment to applying the latest technologies and innovations, and it forms the foundation for supporting our customers in the areas of digital assets,” said Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz, chief operating officer of Commerzbank.



Commerzbank <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/german-banking-giants-move-into-crypto-highlights-growing-trend-in-europe">first revealed its interest in crypto services</a> back in April of 2022. It applied for a license with BaFin back in January of last year.



While Commerzbank is the first, it’s not the only bank in Germany interested in crypto custody. Back in September, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/deutsche-bank-crypto-custody-tokenization">Deutsche Bank’s Paul Maley told Blockworks</a> that it wants to offer corporate and institutional clients custody of “selected cryptocurrencies and some stablecoins.”



It partnered with Swiss crypto firm Taurus to provide custody and tokenization services for institutional clients.



Deutsche Bank <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/deutsche-bank-crypto-custody-license-germany">applied to provide crypto custody services</a> with the German financial regulator back in June.



BaFin also granted crypto custody firm BitGo a license earlier this month, with BitGo’s Matt Ballensweig telling <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitgo-crypto-cold-storage-custodian">Blockworks that the firm moving forward</a> is seeking to “broaden our reach into different segments of the market.”



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Commerzbank scores crypto custody license in Germany

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_626aff63ccd2d" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Former Commerzbank exec joins crypto financial services provider</li>
 <li>A crypto venture capital firm nabs a former Facebook veteran as its GameFi lead</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



21Shares hired former Uber executive Karan Chawla as its vice president of product.&nbsp;



Chawla was most recently Uber’s head of payments in the US, Canada and Asia-Pacific region. He will focus on the firm&#8217;s product roadmap to offer investors access to DeFi protocols and will seek to further drive institutional adoption of digital assets.



As the world’s largest issuer of cryptocurrency ETPs, the company has roughly $2.5 billion in assets under management. <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/21shares-combines-bitcoin-and-gold-in-newest-etp/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">It recently launched</a> a product in Switzerland combining gold and bitcoin exposure and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/first-australian-spot-bitcoin-ether-etfs-to-go-live-next-week/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is set to launch</a> the first bitcoin and ether ETPs (exchange-traded products) in Australia.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Crypto exchange OKX appointed former Okcoin executive Haider Rafique as its chief marketing officer.



Rafique was a special adviser to the OKX executive team earlier this year and helped drive a multimillion-dollar <a href="https://www.mancity.com/news/club/manchester-city-official-cryptocurrency-exchange-partner-okx-63781936" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">partnership agreement</a> with Manchester City. In his new role, he will build a global marketing team to make crypto mainstream and lead the company’s international expansion efforts.



The executive most recently was chief marketing officer for crypto exchange Okcoin. Before that, he was head of growth for Blockchain.com and was a head of product marketing at Microsoft.



Phil Davis is Web3 infrastructure company ConsenSys’s new chief financial officer after serving in that role for seven years at artificial intelligence company Afiniti.



His appointment follows ConsenSys’s <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-plans-to-redesign-metamask-and-hire-600-new-employees/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$450 million Series D round</a> last month, which valued the company at $7 billion.



Davis will oversee the company’s finance and accounting functions, including expanding its treasury strategy. ConsenSys has maintained a significant treasury of ETH, stablecoins and other crypto tokens and puts these assets to work in DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols and through staking.



Babel Finance appointed Yang Song to the newly created position of head of treasury as the company seeks to serve a more diverse set of clients.



The hire comes as the crypto financial services provider, which had a $3 billion outstanding loan balance at the end of the year, created a treasury unit to boost risk management and ensure sufficient liquidity for its lending business.



Song joins Babel Finance after working for 12 years at German bank Commerzbank, where he served as vice president of treasury.



Crypto venture capital firm Fundamental Labs is adding former Facebook veteran Vinayak Rao as its GameFi lead as more Web2 gaming companies enter the Web3 world.



He will focus on supporting founders through investments and resources across the Web3 and blockchain gaming ecosystem.



Prior to Rao’s latest appointment, he led Facebook’s gaming product partnerships team. He also launched Rival Peak, a reality television show simulated entirely within a game engine — a platform that enables games to be playable on top of video content.



CoinList hired Michael Coates and Amir Kavousian to lead the company’s digital asset services division.&nbsp;



Coates is a former Twitter chief information security officer and head of security for Mozilla, while Kavousian previously worked as a data science lead at Capital One.



The appointments come as part of CoinList’s acquisition of cloud security company Altitude Networks, for which Coates was CEO and Kavousian was chief technology officer.



Cross-exchange digital asset trading network Apifiny named Diana Pires as its chief revenue officer as it continues recruiting talent ahead of its planned merger with Abri SPAC Inc.&nbsp;



Pires previously worked for S&amp;P Global before transitioning to OKX. She then became a senior vice president at Crypto.com, where she built out its institutional pipeline and drove business development.



&#8220;My experience has provided insight into the gap in the rapidly developing digital asset trading ecosystem,” Pires said in a statement. “I’ve been impressed with how Apifiny has pinpointed the issue of fragmented liquidity, faced today by exchanges, traders and new blockchain token projects.”



Quadrata, a Web3 identity passport network bringing financial services to DeFi, tapped several industry leaders as company advisers.



The new Quadrata advisers include Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association; David Kravitz, senior director of research at Spring Labs; Don Ho, executive director of Quantstamp Technologies; Tony Sheng, founder of Cozy Finance; and Sebastien Borget, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sandbox.&nbsp;



In case you missed it, former JPMorgan Managing Director Christine Moy is also <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/apollo-global-management-hires-its-first-head-of-digital-assets-strategy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">set to join Apollo Global Management</a> to lead its digital asset strategy.



Moy will help the alternative asset manager, which controls roughly $500 billion, invest further in innovative digital asset companies and founders.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: 21Shares Taps Ex-Uber Exec to Lead Product Roadmap

<div id="highlights-block_6262cc120e9ec" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Crypto custodial services were first brought under the purview of German financial regulators in January 2020</li>
 <li>European Union watchdogs are still in the process of drafting and implementing their own regulatory measures on digital assets</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Commerzbank, Germany’s fourth-largest bank, has confirmed it wants to offer digital assets custody and exchange services to clients, joining a growing number of conservative banks in Europe moving into digital assets.



Bernd Reh, a Commerzbank senior spokesman, confirmed to local media <a href="https://www.boersen-zeitung.de/banken-finanzen/commerzbank-beantragt-krypto-verwahrlizenz-303b9c3a-bbeb-11ec-8e62-5f7cf1d225cc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Börsen-Zeitung</a> last week that the bank applied for a license in January from BaFin, Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, and that the bank would first focus on institutional customers. The banking giant currently has 70,000 corporate and institutional clients worldwide.



“Where traditional and large banks until very recently have seen crypto as competition and shied away from it, we now start to see adoption even from some of the most conservative players in the banking field,” Mikkel Morch, executive director at crypto hedge fund ARK36, said. Commerzbank, which had some 541 billion euros ($583 billion) under management in late 2021 according to its latest financial statement, has been working on several blockchain projects since 2018.



In January 2020, Germany introduced crypto custody into the German Banking Act as a new financial service. “Crypto custody business is also subject to the notice issued by [the German central bank] Deutsche Bundesbank on the granting of authorization to provide financial services,” BaFin says on its website dedicated to crypto licensing.&nbsp;



The regulator is also cracking down on unauthorized activity. Recently, the supervisory authority opened investigations into several crypto services companies that have not been granted authorization to operate in the country. If found guilty, individuals involved could face up to five years in prison.



Authorities and legislators in the European Union are still in the process of building regulatory regimes, but some, such as those in Germany and Portugal, already have registration procedures in place.



And traditional banks are increasingly applying for crypto licenses in Europe, including in Portugal, where <a href="https://www.securities.io/portugals-bison-bank-granted-the-license-to-offer-crypto-custody-services/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bison Bank</a> last week became the first authorized bank to receive a crypto license from the country’s central bank.



Last July, Coinbase was awarded Germany’s <a href="https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-secures-first-crypto-licence-in-germany-8a5207fbc03b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first crypto license</a>. A <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/report-germany-is-the-most-crypto-friendly-country/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report by Coincub</a> last week ranked Germany as the most crypto-friendly country.



Added Morch: “These moves can be interpreted as the beginnings of a race within the traditional banking field to gain a competitive edge by being the first entity in its local market to offer crypto services.”



As a result, crypto adoption will increase, he believes, and it will be a mainstream financial service – instead of the “next big thing.”



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