On September 16 local time, Deutsche Bank announced plans to launch a crypto-asset custody service for European institutions and businesses this year. The first customers' use of the service is conditional on completion of the relevant regulatory steps. Under the custody service, the bank would manage wallets and private keys on customers' behalf to hold assets and enable transfers to third parties. The bank said this would reduce customers' burden of building and maintaining their own custody infrastructure. Initial supported assets are expected to include bitcoin, ether, and the stablecoins USDC, EURC, and EURAU. EURAU is a euro stablecoin issued by AllUnity, a joint venture involving Deutsche Bank's asset-management affiliate DWS. Target customers include businesses using the bank's corporate-banking and investment-banking divisions, asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokers, and government entities; access will be subject to the bank's criteria, due-diligence requirements, and risk appetite. The bank said its security design includes secure key generation, hardware-based protection of private keys, segregation of duties, multiple approvals, separate warm and cold storage, redundant technology, and controlled backup and recovery procedures.
Gerald Podobnik, co-head of corporate banking, said crypto assets were a complement rather than a replacement for the traditional financial system, offering a new route that could coexist with established market infrastructure while benefiting from the trust and safeguards provided by a regulated financial institution. The bank plans to expand the range of supported assets or handle tokenized financial products depending on customer demand, product approvals, risk management, and regulatory procedures. It said the launch timing, regions, supported assets, and scope could change because of regulatory requirements or internal approvals. It also stated that crypto assets held in custody do not receive the same deposit protection as eligible bank deposits.