The line of companies who present cryptoasset custody services for institutional investors has started growing lately. Now, Boerse Stuttgart seeks to widen its one-year-old Blocknox business to cater also to the institution segment.

Having run the service at the smaller scale for a year now, Boerse Stuttgart says it is now planning to let Blocknox target institutional clients such as fintechs, banks and asset managers. The service is described as custody of cryptocurrencies “on an escrow basis”.

In the press release, Blocknox managing director Ulli Spankowski says that the institutional clients could use the custody service “as a building block for their own services around digital assets”. He adds that the company will apply for a license to act under Germany’s new legal regulation of crypto custody, which came into force on 1 January 2020. This should make Blocknox a regulated financial services provider.

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Suddenly many to choose from

In the last year, crypto asset custody services have moved rapidly from being an odd novelty in the financial landscape, to connect with the traditional industry.

We recently noted the opening, by cryptocurrency exchange operator Coinbase, of a new office in Dublin to serve European institutional clients with custody services. This, in turn, followed similar roll-outs by its competitor Gemini and US fund giant Fidelity, in the form of offices in London. In a pilot, Gemini has partnered with global custody giant State Street.