In an important development, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, began offering cryptocurrency custody to institutional and corporate clients on Wednesday.
Under the arrangement, Deutsche Bank provides the technology needed to store and transfer digital assets, including management of clients’ private keys. Customers access the platform through the bank’s Autobahn corporate banking system. The service supports bitcoin, ether, USDC, EURC and EURAU(Euro-pegged stablecoins). Clients can hold the assets with the bank and make transfers to other parties, officials said.
The bank’s digital asset custody platform includes hardware-protected private key storage, warm and cold wallets, multiple approval controls and separate storage arrangements for client assets. Deutsche Bank’s listing for crypto custody and transfer services in the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) register is dated October 12 and names Germany’s BaFin as its regulator.
In 2023, the bank had also partnered with Taurus to develop digital asset custody and tokenization services, and Bitpanda was also reported to be involved in the project.
Also on Wednesday, Deutsche Bank entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Deutsche Asset Management. Under this agreement, the firms will examine custody and settlement arrangements, as well as liquidity management, treasury and distribution, using Deutsche Bank’s DAC platform.
Meanwhile, the bank said on Tuesday that it expects the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by an additional 25 basis points in January 2027.
