Deutsche Börse, IT services provider Swisscom and FinTech firm Sygnum announced they are partnering to create a digital asset infrastructure on blockchain.
Together, the firms will offer a “regulatory compliant ecosystem” that includes issuance, custody, access to liquidity, and banking services, which will all use distributed ledger technology (DLT).
“Switzerland, known to be a nucleus for financial markets innovation, is the ideal starting point for Deutsche Börse to drive this evolution forward,” said Jens Hachmeister, managing director of DLT, crypto assets and new market structure at Deutsche Börse, according to Banking Tech.
“The partnership combines unique know-how in the fields of digital assets, banking, compliance and technology,” added Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, chief digital officer of Swisscom.
Deutsche Börse will also be making an investment in Custodigit. Founded in 2018 as a joint venture by Swisscom and Sygnum, Custodigit offers a solution for the custody of digital assets for regulated financial services institutions so that customers can manage the life cycle of their digital assets.
In addition, Deutsche Börse and Sygnum will become shareholders of Daura, which has developed a platform that uses DLT to issue, transfer and register Swiss SME shares.
And a Forbes report has revealed that 2018 wasn’t a good year for blockchain-based companies. In fact, 1,811 of the 9,000 blockchain startups that have posted code to GitHub are no longer active. That means that 20 percent of the platform’s sample stopped showing “signs of life” in 2018, while many vanished entirely.
Reasons for the failure rate include scams and Ponzi schemes for the companies that vanished, as well as poor capital management, business model failure and shifting regulations for the legitimate businesses that failed.
“A large number of companies were shut down in 2018 after India and China’s announcements of considering cryptocurrencies illegal on their soil,” said Novum’s CEO and founder Toby Lewis.
As for which blockchain-based companies have been seeing success, only 10 percent of companies focused on education and academia have failed.
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