In “somewhat of a surprise” – writes crypto analyst Noelle Acheson – Germany’s Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) has been making moves into crypto recently. Considering that the bank is a conservative savings institution partially owned by the state, Acheson speculates in an opinion piece for Coindesk that the moves only make sense because LBBW could be “getting ready for a more tokenised business world”.
Earlier this month, LBBW announced a strategic partnership with exchange platform Bitpanda to offer crypto custody services. Acheson quotes Jürgen Harengel, COO of LBBW’s corporate bank, who hinted at the bank’s true motivations during the announcement of the partnership – “We are convinced that crypto assets will establish themselves as a building block for further business models”.
Trailblazer
Besides the partnership with Bitpanda, LBBW was one of the first issuers of digital securities on Deutsche Börse’s D7 platform back in 2022, and one of the pioneering participants in the European Central Bank’s (ECB) current DLT trial for wholesale central bank money (CeBM).
The bank is “not as interested in crypto trading as it is in token utility, and what that can do for its corporate clients,” Acheson guesses. It is therefore “actively exploring corporate blockchain applications”.
In her estimation, LBBW is working towards having “an active token exchange platform up and running for when token issuance becomes more common among businesses developing enterprise blockchain applications”.