The growth of the Komainu custody service tracks rising institutional interest in digital assets
Growing institutional interest in the largest and most liquid crypto-currencies is now spilling over into staking via Decentralised Finance (DeFi) protocols and into Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs). While widening institutional interest in digital assets is partly explicable as a search for an income-producing outlet for crypto-currency holdings, it also attests to a growing institutional confidence that blockchain-based networks will one disrupt the established order in the money and capital markets. The joint venture partners behind one regulated digital asset custodian for institutional traders and investors – investment bank Nomura, blockchain technology vendor Ledger and crypto-currency fund manager CoinShares – are certainly betting on that outcome, with the support of some shrewd private investors. Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, spoke to Sebastian Widmann, Head of Strategy at Komainu, about the origins and growth of the firm.