Ben Strack

Another traditional finance giant is wading into the crypto space.



Deutsche Bank is set to establish digital asset custody and tokenization services via a new partnership with Switzerland-based Taurus — a firm that offers infrastructure to issue, custody and trade crypto, tokenized assets and NFTs.&nbsp;



“The market has evolved to an extent where we see partnership opportunities key to developing the products and services that our clients are demanding,” Paul Maley, head of Deutsche Bank’s securities services, told Blockworks in an email.&nbsp;



Deutsche Bank looks to initially offer custody of “selected cryptocurrencies and some stablecoins” for corporate and institutional clients in the German company’s “home market regions,” the executive added — though he did not name specific assets.



On the tokenization front, the firm aims to first tokenize traditional financial securities.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/real-world-assets-tradfi-defi-tokenization">TradFi, DeFi convergence continues through tokenizing real-world assets</a>



BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said last year that the tokenization of securities is “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-ceo-still-in-crypto-for-the-tech-despite-ftx-scandal">the next generation for markets</a>.” TradFi firms such as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jpmorgan-trade-on-public-blockchain-monumental-step-for-defi">JPMorgan</a>, <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230110005308/en/Goldman-Sachs%E2%80%99-Tokenization-Platform-GS-DAP%E2%84%A2-Leveraging-Daml-Goes-Live">Goldman Sachs</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-with-yield-franklin-templeton">Franklin Templeton</a> have been busy in recent years and months exploring the tokenization space.



“We expect to see more and more traditional assets and cash payments eventually come on-chain,” Maley said. “Positioning ourselves for the future is our primary focus and we are working on a select number of projects to develop our capabilities.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A&nbsp; journey into the space&nbsp;</h2>



Deutsche Bank participated in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/credit-suisse-taurus-deal">Taurus’ $65 million funding round</a> in February — a fundraise led by fellow traditional financial giant Credit Suisse.&nbsp;



Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi told Blockworks at the time that Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank have integrated its tech, or planned to — noting there would be “landmark transactions” in the coming months.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Teaming up with Taurus also comes after <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/deutsche-bank-crypto-custody-license-germany">Deutsche Bank applied to Germany’s financial regulator</a> in June to provide custody services for cryptocurrencies.



The latest partnership reflects “a natural extension” of Deutsche Bank initiatives laid out in a December 2020 <a href="https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Cryptocurrency_Uses_Cases_2020.pdf">report</a> by the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cryptocurrencies. the company noted in a Thursday news release.



Deutsche Bank said its aim at the time was to create a custody platform for institutional clients that would “introduce a secure connected bridge between digital assets and a customer’s traditional banking services.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



The bank planned to manage various digital assets and fiat holdings on one platform and allow clients to access those assets via “an institutional-grade hot [or] cold storage solution with insurance-grade protection.”



“We are pleased to implement this global partnership with Deutsche Bank and look forward to supporting the bank in launching digital assets and DLT-based products and services across several booking centers,” Brahimi said in a Thursday statement.&nbsp;



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Financial giant Deutsche Bank eyes crypto custody, tokenization

Bessie Liu

Cryptocurrency and Web3 companies locked down a cumulative $185 million this week — down from a total of $213 million last week.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The majority of companies raising over the last seven days were rustling up pre-seed or seed funding. Many of the startups are building out Web3’s infrastructure.&nbsp;



Here are the highlights of some of the most notable funding news this week:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Taurus:</h2>



Taurus, the digital asset infrastructure firm, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/credit-suisse-taurus-deal">closed a $65 million Series B led by Credit Suisse</a>. Other investors included Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group and Arab Bank Switzerland.



Taurus’ latest capital inflows will be used to grow its team, the company said in a statement, under the more specific focus on hiring engineering and sales talent.&nbsp;



Sabih Behzad, Deutsche Bank’s head of digital assets, said the company plans to integrate Taurus’ technology into its own IT environment.



“This will form a key part of our digital asset custody platform and will make it easier for us to develop and roll out our digital asset custody offering,” Behzad said in a statement. “Through this investment, Deutsche Bank is delighted to partner on the development of the market for digital assets.”



One sign to keep an eye out for Deutsche Bank’s move into cryptocurrencies.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Superplastic:</h2>



Superplastic, an entertainment and product brand that has launched various NFTs, has <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/amazon-studios-superplastic-investment-janky-guggimon-show-1235523382/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">secured</a> $20 million in an extension of the startup’s Series A led by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/amazon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon’s</a> Alexa Fund.



Other prominent venture funds — including Craft Ventures, Google Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Sony Japan and Animoca Brands — also participated.



The Vermont-based company creates “synthetic celebrities” — who could soon be featured in Amazon Primes&#8217; next original video series, “The Janky &amp; Guggimon Show.” ​​Both Janky and Guggimon currently boast over a million Instagram followers.



Seems like virtual celebrities are all the new hype for tech giants.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Monad Labs:</h2>



Former Jump Trading founders have secured $19 million in a seed round for their latest startup, Monad Labs.&nbsp;



Venture capital firm Dragon Capital led the raise. Other participants included Paceholder Capital, Lemniscap and Shima Capital.



Prominent DeFi figures Cobie and Hasu also chipped in, the company said in a statement.&nbsp;



The latest capital will allow Monad Labs to continue building its layer-1 smart contract platform.



“We are excited to work alongside our investors to bring Monad to market, build out its capabilities and show the world exactly what blockchains can do,” said Keone Hon, co-founder and chief executive of Monad Labs, in a statement.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable funding rounds include:</h2>



<ul>
<li>Zion, a self-styled “Web5 Creator Network” built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, landed $6 million in a round led by ​​XBTO Humla Ventures.</li>



<li>Sending Labs — a Web3 communication app — took home $12.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Insignia Venture Partners, MindWorks Capital and Signum Capital.</li>



<li>Crypto market index Alongside took in $11 million from a16z.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Roundup: Crypto Companies Landed $185M This Week

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_626a84c2894eb" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>More EU banks will soon offer digital assets to their clients, Taurus CEO says</li>
 <li>The French DASP license prepares banks to comply with EU-wide regulations</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Switzerland has long been thought of as the crypto capital of Europe, with its Zug canton — dubbed ‘Crypto Valley’ — home to <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss--crypto-valley--boasts-14--unicorns-/47291870" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over a thousand blockchain startups</a>. But other countries in the EU are catching up.



A recent report <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/report-germany-is-the-most-crypto-friendly-country/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">put Germany at the top</a> of the crypto-friendly rankings globally, largely due to the rollout of digital asset custody and trading by German banks. That pattern looks to be going continent-wide, as the French Banque Delubac &amp; Cie, founded in 1924, has become the first to receive the status of Digital Asset Service Provider (“DASP”), allowing investment in digital assets, in partnership with Swiss crypto infrastructure provider Taurus.



The DASP license stems from a 2019 law in France — the PACTE law, or Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation (“Plan d&#8217;Action pour la Croissance et la Transformation des Entreprises”) — and it should prepare banks well for the next phase of EU regulation, the MiCa, Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi told Blockworks.



The MiCA (“Markets in Crypto-assets”) regulation, introduced in 2020 and working its way toward adoption in 2023, is the first EU-wide legislative initiative to establish a comprehensive framework for the issuance of and provision of services for cryptoassets.



Until recently, it was unclear whether or how quickly traditional banks such as Delubac &amp; Cie would move to offer digital assets to their client base, according to Brahimi. Perhaps they would leave the space to unregulated entities — firms without banking licenses. But Brahimi is now confident that more incumbent banks will follow.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“You can assume that the demand now is getting mainstream,” Brahimi said, adding “It&#8217;s not just theory.&#8221;</blockquote>



Roughly half of Europeans prefer decentralized exchanges, according to <a href="https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/Secciones/Publicaciones/InformesBoletinesRevistas/InformesEstabilidadFinancera/22/IEF_2022_1_CapE.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a recent report</a> from the Bank of Spain, which rates France and Germany as the top two crypto friendly countries in Europe. But there’s a wide swath of the European public that welcomes the investor protections which come from dealing with a regulated bank, Brahimi said.



“If you are an expert in managing wallets, and you want to do it on your own and secure your private keys yourself, that&#8217;s fine, but the vast majority of the people out there just don&#8217;t want to manage this complexity, and they want to buy cryptos or tokenized securities, or what have you, in the same way they buy stocks, and have it reported in their consolidated banking reporting.”



These fence-sitters may have an interest in trading digital assets, but they prefer to deal with their existing day-to-day bank rather than establish new accounts with crypto-dedicated firms.



If that proves to be the case, infrastructure partners like Taurus — which works with banks in Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Eastern Europe — stand to benefit, as big institutions would rather buy or license a product from a service provider than develop in-house cryptography and specialized IT expertise needed for secure custody.



”Now that the first few banks have made the move, we’ve received multiple calls from players that ask us, ‘how can we move forward?’,” Brahimi said.



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French Bank, Delubac & Cie, First to Offer Regulated Digital Asset Services

<div id="highlights-block_615c4b5f3cf81" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Alaia tokenized shares will be admitted for trading on Taurus Digital Exchange</li>
 <li>Security tokens regulated by the Swiss Capital Markets and Technology Association (“CMTA”) standards, using the Ethereum public blockchain</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Part of the promise of blockchain technology is its supposed ability to improve the issuance and exchange of tokenized securities to make them more secure, efficient and transparent than is possible in traditional finance. The practical application of security tokens, however, has been slow to develop, largely due to regulatory hurdles.



One country that seems to be ahead of the rest is Switzerland, where standards developed by the Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) are now seeing adoption in capital markets.



The Geneva-based <a href="https://www.taurushq.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Taurus</a> has developed a suite of tools to enable companies to tokenize their shares on Ethereum in a regulatory-compliant manner. Today, Taurus announced that Alaia SA, a startup that develops and manages sport and hospitality infrastructure, has successfully done just that, with the shares deposited at the banking giant Credit Suisse and soon to be available on the secondary market via <a href="https://t-dx.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Taurus Digital Exchange</a>.



Lamine Brahimi, co-founder of Taurus, said in a statement, “we are committed to supporting entrepreneurs and financial institutions to make private assets digital,” referring to the prospect as “corporate finance 2.0.” 



Taurus’ product line, called Capital, Protect and Explorer, enables the “end-to-end digital management of Alaia shares and their representation in Credit Suisse booking systems,” according to Taurus’ <a href="https://blog.taurushq.com/alaia-tokenises-its-shares-with-credit-suisse-powered-by-taurus/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">press release</a>.



The company simplifies the process for banks, exchanges, broker dealers and large NFT platforms, for example, by facilitating gasless transactions on Ethereum for their clients. Taurus’ smart contracts handle the transaction fees to settle share transactions on-chain.



<meta charset="utf-8">Brahimi told Blockworks the CMTA standard being employed was “an improved version of [earlier standards] with all things related to company shares (investors, whitelisting, corporate actions).” The CMTA “<a href="https://www.cmta.ch/content/52/cmta-blueprint-for-the-tokenization-of-shares-of-swiss-corporations.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blueprint for the tokenization of shares</a>” was developed in September 2018, and outlines a process for Swiss corporations to follow. 



Initially only Ethereum and Tezos are supported blockchains for the security tokens, but the firm plans to support additional chains in the future, he noted.