Deutsche Bank-Backed Swiss Fintech Firm Receives Approval To Offer Tokenized Securities to Retail Clients
Taurus, a Swiss cryptocurrency custody and trading firm, has obtained regulatory approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to offer tokenized shares to retail investors, according to an announcement made on January 23.
This move marks a significant step towards democratizing access to retail customers, in addition to professional and institutional investors.
Taurus' TDX marketplace allows transactions using cryptocurrencies as well as traditional fiat currencies such as Swiss franc, Euro, and U.S. dollar.
The firm also announced that several Swiss firms have already chosen TDX to issue shares, including Investis, la Mobilière, Qoqa, Structured Commodity & Corporate Finance (SCCF), Swissroc, and Teylor.
With FINMA's approval, Taurus can now open its TDX marketplace to retail investors, enabling them to participate in capital raises for unlisted firms in a primary market setting and engage in secondary market trading.
Retail investors can now create an account with Taurus, a regulated securities firm, to securely and compliantly participate in capital raises and trade digital assets and tokenized securities. This approval enhances the liquidity of digital securities and allows companies to access both primary and secondary markets, serving retail and professional investors.
Taurus also announced a new list of issuers selecting TDX as their preferred venue to trade digital securities, including Investis Group, la Mobilière, Qoqa, SCCF, Swissroc, and Teylor.
Yann Isola, TDX Head of Product, said:
“Our core belief at Taurus is that private markets 2.0 shall be digitized, so that buying a private security becomes as easy as buying a book on Amazon. The growing demand for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, the fastest growing market segment in the digital asset space, validates this belief.”
In February 2023, Deutsche Bank took part in Taurus’ $65 million Series B funding round. Deutsche Bank announced a partnership with Taurus to offer digital asset custody and tokenization services to its clients in September 2023.
Tokenization is a hot topic, after BlackRock’s Larry Fink said, “If you had a tokenized security … the moment you buy or sell an instrument, it’s known it’s on a general ledger that is all created together. … This eliminates all corruption, having a tokenized system.” This came after the world’s largest asset manager’s application for a spot Bitcoin ETF was approved alongside 9 other issuers on January 10.
