Deutsche Bank has announced a major global partnership with Swiss digital asset technology provider Taurus to establish digital asset custody and tokenization services for institutional clients.

The partnership will see the 153-year old Deutsche Bank be able to hold a limited number of cryptocurrencies for its clients for the first time. The bank will also have the capacity to hold tokenized versions of traditional financial assets.

Despite this major push into digital assets, the German bank said that crypto trading is not in its “immediate plans” three years after it announced ambitions to offer crypto trading in a World Economic Forum paper.

While crypto markets have struggled to recover from a series of collapses triggered by the reveal of criminal activity at crypto exchange FTX and its subsequent downfall, many major financial institutions such as Standard Chartered and BNY Mellon have still maintained their confidence in the use of blockchain technology in the context of trading and settlement for traditional financial assets.

This new deal for Deutsche Bank marks another major sign of confidence from the traditional banking sector in the long-term prospects of digital assets.

Paul Maley, global head of Securities Services at Deutsche Bank said: “As the digital asset space is expected to encompass trillions of dollars of assets, it’s bound to be seen as one of the priorities for investors and corporations alike. As such, custodians must start adapting to support their clients. This is why we are excited to partner with Taurus, a leading digital asset infrastructure provider with a proven track record and extensive expertise in the crypto and tokenization space.”

Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi said that the company was able to "demonstrate the quality and breadth of its products and technology” through its discussions with Deutsche Bank and said that the company "looks forward to supporting the bank in launching digital assets and DLT-based products and services across several booking centres.”

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