The French bank Delubac & Cie is the first to offer regulated digital asset services

The French bank Delubac & Cie is the first to offer regulated digital asset services

Switzerland has long been considered the crypto capital of Europe, home to the canton of Zug – dubbed “Crypto Valley”. over a thousand blockchain startups. But the countries in the EU are catching up.

A recent report has placed Germany at the top of the crypto-friendly rankings globally, largely due to the introduction of digital asset custody and trading by German banks. This pattern appears to be continuing across the continent, as French Banque Delubac & Cie, founded in 1924, became the first to receive Digital Asset Service Provider (“DASP”) status, enabling investments in digital assets in partnership with Swiss crypto infrastructure provider Taurus.

The DASP license comes from a 2019 law in France – the PACTE law or Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation (““Plan d’Action pour la Croissance et la Transformation des Entreprises”) and should prepare banks well for the next phase of EU regulation, Taurus MiCa co-founder Lamine Brahimi told Blockworks.

The MiCA (“Markets in Crypto-Assets”) Regulation, introduced in 2020 and working towards adoption in 2023, is the first EU-wide legislative initiative to create a comprehensive framework for the issuance and provision of services for crypto-assets.

Until recently, according to Brahimi, it was unclear whether or how quickly traditional banks like Delubac & Cie would move to offering digital assets to their customer base. Maybe they would leave the space to unregulated companies - companies without banking licenses. But Brahimi is now confident that other established banks will follow suit.

“One can expect the demand to become mainstream now,” Brahimi said, adding: “It’s not just theory.”

About half of Europeans prefer loud a current report from the Bank of Spain, which ranks France and Germany as the top two crypto-friendly countries in Europe. But there is a broad section of the European public that welcomes the investor protection that comes from dealing with a regulated bank, Brahimi said.

“If you're an expert at managing wallets and you want to do it yourself and secure your private keys yourself, that's fine, but the vast majority of people out there just don't want to manage that complexity, and they want to buy cryptos or tokenized securities or whatever, just like they buy stocks, and report that on their consolidated banking reporting.”

These fence-sitters may have an interest in trading digital assets, but they prefer to deal with their existing day bank rather than setting up new accounts with crypto-specific firms.

If this is the case, infrastructure partners like Taurus, which work with banks in Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and Eastern Europe, will benefit as large institutions prefer to purchase or license a product from a service provider rather than develop in-house cryptography and specialized IT know-how needed for secure custody.

“Now that the first few banks have made the move, we have received several calls from players asking us, ‘How can we move forward?’” Brahimi said.

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The article French Bank, Delubac & Cie, First to Offer Regulated Digital Asset Services is not financial advice.