Deutsche Bank switches on bitcoin and ether custody for paying clients, and its asset manager plans a tokenized money market fund

Deutsche Bank has started holding crypto for clients. The bank said on Wednesday that its digital asset custody service is live for paying clients, Reuters reported. The bank first announced the service in September for institutional and corporate clients in Europe, pending regulatory approval.

The service covers bitcoin and ether, Reuters reported. The September plan also named three stablecoins, USDC, EURC and EURAU, The Block said, without saying which assets are live now. The bank manages clients' wallets and private keys, uses warm and cold storage with hardware key protection, requires more than one person to approve transactions, and processes transfers to other parties. Deutsche Bank partnered with the custody technology firm Taurus in 2023 to develop custody and tokenization services, The Block said. Neither report gave the number of clients or the value of assets held.

Alongside the launch, the bank signed a memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Asset Management, the money manager it mostly owns. The two will look at tokenized money market funds, crypto exchange-traded commodities and stablecoins, The Block said, and the asset manager's chief product officer, Manfred Bauer, said it plans to launch a tokenized money market fund. Paul Maley, the bank's global head of trust and securities services, said it aims in the medium term to build a "fully integrated, regulated ecosystem" for the custody, tokenization and settlement of digital assets. The bank has previously told Reuters it wants to offer the service in Asia.