Quick take:
- Zodia Custody is teaming up with Ripple’s Metaco to enhance the safekeeping and settlement of digital assets.
- The Standard Chartered-backed digital assets custody service wants to offer global sub-custody, banking parlance between institutions and custodians.
- The partnership exemplifies a growing need for crypto custody services as providers look to remove counterparty risk.
Zodia Custody has teamed up with Metaco to enhance the safekeeping and settlement of digital assets. This partnership links two of the largest financial services organisations in the world. Zodia Custody is backed by the UK’s Standard Chartered Bank, while Metaco was acquired by Ripple for $250 million in May 2023.
This partnership comes as more financial services companies look to remove counterparty risk in crypto custody. Non-custodial digital asset storage services allow users to gain full control of their digital assets by separating securities keys.
Zodia’s off-exchange custody solution provides similar protection to institutional investors by ensuring assets are not exposed to risk while trading. The company is registered in the UK, Ireland and Luxembourg.
On the other hand, Metaco enables financial institutions and banks to scale their custody services to massive user bases through its enterprise-ready packages that allow providers to integrate multiple crypto asset types.
Explaining how financial custody infrastructure is evolving, Zodia Custody CEO Julian Sawyer told CoinDesk that for the digital asset industry to resemble how things work in traditional finance, different types of networks will appear, giving examples of the Copper Clear Loop system, which recently joined forces with BitGo’s Go network and Fireblocks’ self-custody off-exchange systems.
According to Sawyer, the crypto custody industry is marching towards an interconnected network of custodians.
“For example, a client in Brazil, who is a custodian, may want to store some assets in the UK, and they’re not currently in the UK. So they could use us as their sub-custodian and use our regulatory permissions, etc. I think the multiple networks that are out there are really key in terms of linking custodians together and linking custodians to exchanges and venues in a compliant manner,” he said.
Zodia Custody believes that the integration with Metaco’s network will allow it to offer global sub-custody between corporate institutions and custodians.
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