The London-based firm, whose name is supposed to remind customers of a bank vault, provides custody, lending, staking and trading products for 35 digital assets. Since 2017, Vo1t has been offering cold storage to firms listed on the Financial Times Stock Exchange, Trust companies and other financial institutions around the world. It advertises a 45-minute withdrawal time for assets held in cold storage.
Cold storage custody provider Vo1t is offering clients secure data centers from IBM to hold and encrypt their private keys.
The new option, which comes from IBM Hyper Protect, ensures clients’ keys are safe even if Vo1t’s data centers are compromised. The data center can be installed on the premises or accessed remotely from a client’s computer; the enclave keeps the data encrypted, regardless of whether it’s in transit or in memory.
“Having this means our clients get to sign with their key in a separate transaction with IBM”, said Sebastian Higgs, general manager at Vo1t.
While custody was once only the purview of wallet providers and crypto exchanges, banks and other large firms are pursuing the institutional investors who are becoming increasingly interested investing in cryptocurrency.
“We’ve been looking at the digital custody space and how we could make our servers and our cloud platform be a killer value proposition for this specific market”, said Rohit Badlaney, director of IBM Z as-a-Service.
Custody Startup Curv Follows Crypto Demand Into Asia With New Hong Kong Office
Institutional custody startup Curv has expanded into Asia with an office in Hong Kong and a partnership with Japan-based Crypto Garage, the companies announced Friday.
Curv, is aiming to help Asian exchanges self-custody various cryptocurrencies with its multi-party computation (MPC) technology, said CEO Itay Malinger. Exchanges in the region self-custody more often than in the U.S. and Europe, and Asia has more exchanges per capita than other parts of the world, he added.
Crypto Garage is building its own atomic settlement platform, called SETTLENET, on top of bitcoin startup Blockstream’s privacy-enhancing Liquid Network. The atomic settlement platform, which provides instant settlement for smart contracts that swap one crypto asset for another, will launch in June and is non-custodial.
“We thought the MPC approach where the private key is not stored in one place and is split up was very appealing to use from a security standpoint”, said Crypto Garage’s Justin Dhingra.
The settlement platform will ensure that the transfer of assets happens without having to find a third-party custodian. Crypto Garage is driving settlements over the Liquid Network, Malinger said.
“Crypto Garage is very significant in the Japanese market”, said Malinger. Curv also has another strategic investor in Japan, signaling the firm’s growing interest in Asian markets.
Custody Provider Legacy Trust Launches Crypto Pension Plan
Cryptocurrency custody provider Legacy Trust is launching one of the first digital assets-based pension plans.
The Hong Kong-licensed firm announced on Wednesday that the scheme will be on offer to both employees of participating firms and the self-employed, and will offer an underlying portfolio that includes cryptos as well as fiat currencies. It’s also expected to appeal to crypto investors.
Legacy Trust CEO Vincent Chok said:
“We envisage that this will appeal to businesses who are active in the digital assets space, and who want to offer additional benefits to their employees to retain talent and recognise achievement. What better way to drive employee loyalty while allowing valuable staff to participate in the growth of the company and the digital asset space?”
The plan will be funded by either voluntary contributions or deducted directly from an employees salary. The pension will be paid out after retirement of the scheme member, or to beneficiaries in the event of their death.
Legacy Trust said the plan “addresses various tax concerns for digital assets holders”, though it did not offer any details.
In March, the firm partnered with hardware wallet maker Ledger to offer “institutional-grade” cryptocurrency custody.
By utilizing Ledger’s multi-signature cryptocurrency wallet management product Ledger Vault, Legacy Trust said at the time it would be able to “securely and efficiently” custody clients’ digital assets, such as bitcoin and ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens.
