Nasdaq is taking its first steps into crypto services with an emphasis on security, entering the business with a custody product for bitcoin and ether aimed at institutional investors.
“We feel that custody is foundational to any other service that we build,” says Ira Auerbach, the newly named head of Nasdaq Digital Assets. “The ability to hold on to our customers' funds in a safe, secure, scalable and accessible manner is a key launch point for anything else we do in the future,” added the former head of the Gemini exchange’s crypto prime brokerage.
Crypto custody is central not only to Nasdaq’s digital asset ambitions, but to the industry as a whole. Clients are required to place enormous trust in their custodians, a confidence that individual investors are skeptical of handing over. This wariness has given rise to the phrase “not your keys, not your crypto,” meaning that private keys – analogous to passwords for the accounts holding crypto funds – do not belong in the hands of intermediaries. Since institutions are unlikely to build out their own infrastructure to custody assets, they need to choose a partner prepared to take custody of institutional-sized cryptocurrency accounts.
When asked why clients would choose a traditional financial player instead of a crypto-native firm to take custody of their digital assets, Auerbach responds that Nasdaq is uniquely positioned because of its knowledge of what institutional clients need in order to use a financial product.
“We have a long history of working with these institutions, we know their pain points, we have products built internally to address these pain points,” Auerbach said. “We think we can make institutions much more comfortable and usher in a larger adoption of the ecosystem.”
In parallel with the custody service, Nasdaq is expanding its anti-financial crime technology to weed out money laundering, fraud and market abuse in digital assets. The advantage Nasdaq has is that the company has the capabilities to analyze potentially fraudulent behavior in both traditional markets and digital assets as well, says Valarie Bannert-Thurner, senior vice president of anti-financial crime technology at Nasdaq.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2022/09/22/nasdaq-enters-crypto-business-with-focus-on-security/?sh=37a5c0cd3dee
“We feel that custody is foundational to any other service that we build,” says Ira Auerbach, the newly named head of Nasdaq Digital Assets. “The ability to hold on to our customers' funds in a safe, secure, scalable and accessible manner is a key launch point for anything else we do in the future,” added the former head of the Gemini exchange’s crypto prime brokerage.
Crypto custody is central not only to Nasdaq’s digital asset ambitions, but to the industry as a whole. Clients are required to place enormous trust in their custodians, a confidence that individual investors are skeptical of handing over. This wariness has given rise to the phrase “not your keys, not your crypto,” meaning that private keys – analogous to passwords for the accounts holding crypto funds – do not belong in the hands of intermediaries. Since institutions are unlikely to build out their own infrastructure to custody assets, they need to choose a partner prepared to take custody of institutional-sized cryptocurrency accounts.
When asked why clients would choose a traditional financial player instead of a crypto-native firm to take custody of their digital assets, Auerbach responds that Nasdaq is uniquely positioned because of its knowledge of what institutional clients need in order to use a financial product.
“We have a long history of working with these institutions, we know their pain points, we have products built internally to address these pain points,” Auerbach said. “We think we can make institutions much more comfortable and usher in a larger adoption of the ecosystem.”
In parallel with the custody service, Nasdaq is expanding its anti-financial crime technology to weed out money laundering, fraud and market abuse in digital assets. The advantage Nasdaq has is that the company has the capabilities to analyze potentially fraudulent behavior in both traditional markets and digital assets as well, says Valarie Bannert-Thurner, senior vice president of anti-financial crime technology at Nasdaq.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2022/09/22/nasdaq-enters-crypto-business-with-focus-on-security/?sh=37a5c0cd3dee
