ING has spun out its crypto custody platform ‘Pyctor’ to GMEX Group, a leading digital business and technology solutions provider for exchanges and post-trade market infrastructure.
Pyctor is an institutional-grade crypto custody solution designed for firms operating in regulated environments. It provides safekeeping and transaction services for any digital assets, by utilizing its patent-pending multi-signatory and multi-party approval protocol.
The solution implements a decentralized operating model that leverages upon hardware technologies like Hardware Security Module (HSM), as well as proprietary Multi-Party Computation (MPC) software. The benefits of this approach are increased security, resilience, 24/7 availability and risk mitigation.
Pyctor’s Travel Rule Module (Pyxis), offers FATF Rule 16 compliance and is compatible with the Travel Rule Protocol (TRP). It enables regulated DeFi and digital assets AML compliance.
Pyctor was incubated in ING Neo’s Amsterdam innovation lab, in collaboration with major financial institutions and regulators.
Commenting on the decision to spin out Pyctor from ING Bank, Olivier Guillaumond, Global head of innovation Labs & Fintechs, ING said:
“ING Labs incubated Pyctor leveraging ING’s DLT expertise, deep digital assets knowledge and continuous feedback from regulators and network participants. We now have found the right partner in GMEX to scale Pyctor to the next stage. It brings the ideal connectivity between multiple trading parties and digital assets custodians, while addressing interoperability issues experienced in the market.”
Hirander Misra, CEO of GMEX Group said: “Pyctor’s decentralized network of institutional participants and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) proprietary custody technology offering compliments and strengthens the breadth of GMEX’s MultiHub ‘global network of networks’ as part of our strategic ethos of stimulating growth in the digital assets market”.
Mr. Misra has been appointed Chairman of Pyctor with other senior appointments to be announced in due course. Pyctor is now a service offering within GMEX, but it will keep on working with ING and collaborate through ING’s digital assets team.
Explaining the decision to acquire Pyctor, GMEX Group wrote in a blog post: It provides the ideal connectivity between multiple trading parties and digital assets custodians, while addressing interoperability issues experienced in the market aligned with current and evolving regulations.
“With this acquisition, GMEX Group consolidates its position as the first platform to offer an end-to-end multi-asset, multi-sector Hybrid Finance (HyFi) solution that bridges the gap between off-chain Traditional Finance (TradFi) and on-chain Decentralized Finance (DeFi) across jurisdictions,” Hirander added.
ING said that combining the Pyctor crypto custody platform with GMEX’s MultiHub will empower financial markets participants to securely issue, access, manage, store and transact digital assets in a regulatory compliant manner alongside their traditional assets.
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