Deutsche Bank (DBK) plans to develop the digital asset and custody business, increasing fee income from servicing corporate clients.
DBK, Germany’s largest financial conglomerate, applied to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) for a license to store digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. It was reported by Bloomberg.
The initiative also reflects the interest in the digital asset market by DWS Group, the bank’s investment arm. Specifically, the company’s reps are in talks to buy Deutsche Digital Assets, a provider of crypto exchange-traded products, and market maker Tradias.
Deutsche Bank first expressed interest in providing digital asset services back in 2020. At that time, they planned to launch a platform for institutional clients that would provide them with direct interaction with the cryptocurrency market. The project was never launched.
In February 2023, it became known that Deutsche Bank in partnership with Memento Blockchain was working on Project DAMA, a DeFi platform for securities tokenization, which by that time had already successfully passed the proof-of-concept phase.
