blocknox, the cryptocurrency custodian wholly-owned by Boerse Stuttgart Group, will be offering its services to institutional clients. The service was established at the end of January 2019 for users of the BISON app and extended at the end of September 2019 for users of Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange (BSDEX). Now, the plan is
to target institutional clients such as fintechs, banks, and asset managers.
Ulli Spankowski, Managing Director of blocknox, commented: “As a pioneer in Germany, blocknox has already been operating as a custodian of cryptocurrencies for more than one year. Now we want institutional clients to benefit from our experience and set-up as well. They can use blocknox’s reliable custody as a building block for their own services around digital assets. A multilevel security concept has been developed and implemented at blocknox for the custody of cryptocurrencies. We welcome the regulation of crypto custody as a reasonable step towards further professionalization of the industry. Thanks to the new legislation, more institutional players are likely to enter the crypto market. We look forward to supporting them as a custody provider.”
Germany has stepped up its legal regulation of crypto custody which has entered effect on 1 January 2020. blocknox has already announced its intent to the supervisory authorities to apply for the required license, which is deemed to have been granted provisionally. The firm will submit the final application by the specified deadline. In this process, blocknox becomes a regulated financial services provider.
In late 2019, Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange (BSDEX) announced it had gone live to all investors based in Germany, almost 24 hours, seven days a week. The country’s first regulated trading venue for digital assets allows users to trade the Bitcoin-Euro pair, with further digital assets to be made available. blocknox takes care of the custody of the acquired cryptocurrencies on an escrow basis, free of charge for BSDEX users.
Orders are executed directly against each other according to fixed rules. Open order books provide information about existing orders and the current market situation. In addition, financial services provider EUWAX AG, a subsidiary of Boerse Stuttgart GmbH, increases liquidity by providing buying and selling prices. At BSDEX, there are transaction fees based on the type of order.
The trading venue is operated as a multilateral trading facility by Baden-Wuerttembergische Wertpapierboerse, which also is the operating company for the public stock exchange in Stuttgart. The technical operator of BSDEX is Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange GmbH, a joint venture of Boerse Stuttgart GmbH, Axel Springer and finanzen.net.
