Nomura, the Japanese financial holding company, blockchain asset storage company Ledger and Global Advisors, one of the first institutional-grade Bitcoin investment firms have announced ‘Komainu’ to bring together the traditional and disruptive worlds of asset custody, paving the way for secure and compliant institutional investment in digital assets.
It will provide infrastructure and an operational framework to the wider investment management industry and enable investors to embed or implement a consistent set of best practice standards within their businesses.
This partnership draws together the expertise from banking, asset administration, fund management, trading and digital asset security. Despite growing worldwide investor appetite, a shortage of robust safekeeping solutions is preventing asset managers from building effective investment vehicles. To date, activity has been limited due to a lack of security, regulatory and compliance criteria within this frontier ecosystem.
The custody offering will address challenges faced by investors entering the sector. With the ten largest digital assets alone reaching a total combined market capitalization of $300bn+, institutional investors are actively exploring ways to gain exposure to a rapidly emerging asset class. One in five finance firms is considering launching digital asset trading and investment businesses in the coming year.
Jez Mohideen, Global Chief Digital Officer, Wholesale at Nomura, said: “Global investment managers have long been held back from full participation in digital asset markets, limited by operational and regulatory risk. Our new partnership will set the required standards that will bring peace of mind to digital asset investors, and provide tools and products to enable
better integration with more traditional investment vehicles such as mutual funds.”
Pascal Gauthier, President of Ledger, said: “Ledger is a well-established security solution provider with over 1 million Nano S hardware wallets sold. The Vault (a secure hardware-based key management solution for digital assets) is a natural expansion of our offering, tailored to address the challenges faced by the financial industry. By bringing together financial industry experts and digital asset security leaders, our new venture will provide, for the first time, services and solutions built for business.”
Jean-Marie Mognetti, Co-Principal of Global Advisors Holdings Limited, said: “Since its first digital asset trade in 2012, Global Advisors, the parent company of CoinShares, has been looking for a robust custody solution, the likes of which are readily available in the analog financial system. After 6 years of research – and collaboration with our administration partner and its regulator – we now have demonstrable progress. This partnership is a progressive stepping stone towards the creation of the necessary prerequisites for further growth within the digital asset ecosystem. This will open new and exciting opportunities to global participants and contribute to move digital asset closer to mainstream offerings.”
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