The Switzerland-based Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) announced a common industry standard for the custody and management of digital assets. CMTA’s “Digital Assets Custody Standard” is designed to clarify the differences between storing cryptocurrencies and storing traditional assets, as well as to set basic security and operational requirements for industry actors.
Established in Geneva in 2018, CMTA is a non-profit, independent association aimed at promoting the adoption of distributed ledger technologies like blockchain and digital assets in the financial markets.
Fedor Poskriakov, General Secretary at CMTA and a partner at Swiss law firm Lenz & Staehelin, presented the new document as the Swiss financial industry’s first step towards a consensus on common standards for the custody and management of digital asset.
This will greatly contribute to the emergence of fully digital capital market infrastructures, including integrated custody and secondary trading venues. The benefits of the digitalization of the financial industry are such that the evolution towards decentralized infrastructures seems inevitable.
The CMTA highlighted that storage of digital assets is significantly different from traditional assets. Crypto assets require decentralized infrastructure for storage is well developed and resistant to loss, theft or hacking.
The association also outlined some of the benefits in the use of DLT for financial markets. CMTA points out the value of simple and autonomous financing mechanisms for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Blockchain technology can enable SMEs to issue and trade securities on decentralized platforms and to benefit from disintermediation and new digital infrastructure to gain access to markets usually reserved for larger market participants.
Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
