After handing out a handful of virtual banking licenses, Hong Kong has issued its first digital asset custodian license.
Aegis Custody, a Fosun-backed digital asset financial services company, has had its digital asset custody business licensed by the Hong Kong Companies Registry of Trust and Company Services Providers, according to a statement. The company’s Founder and CEO, Serra Wei, said that this is a major milestone for her company and that it allows them to offer their products and services to institutional investors around the globe.
“Through our Hong Kong business, we will be able to service clients interested in the new digital asset economy on a global scale, while we continue our license application as a Qualified Custodian in the United States,” Wei said, adding that she is “grateful to my team at Aegis, our investors and the forward-thinking regulators in Hong Kong for this step forward in the development of the fintech industry in this market.”
Based in San Francisco, Aegis mostly works with family offices, asset managers, exchanges, asset-backed token issuers, third-party trusts, and financial institutions. It has developed a distributed hardware device called the “Aegis Pen” which features a transaction management system designed for institutional needs. The solution is claimed to be “a highly-secure digital asset management workflow which does not compromise accessibility and flexibility” which supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC-20 tokens and other digital asset applications.
Photo: Tehani Schroeder