The Geneva-based Capital Markets and Technology Association (CMTA) has released a common industry standard for the custody and management of digital assets.
On 30 April, the CMTA published the “Digital Assets Custody Standard” (DACS), which sets out standardised minimum security and operational requirements, and defines the differences between storing traditional and digital assets, for the industry in Switzerland.
Discussing the new standards, General Secretary at the CMTA and Partner at Lenz & Staehelin, Fedor Poskriakov, said:
“The digitalization of the capital markets infrastructures is accelerating. In that context, the launch of the “Digital Assets Custody Standard” represents a key milestone, as it is the first initiative of the Swiss financial industry to agree on a common standard for custody and management of digital assets.
“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.”
An independent non-profit association, the CMTA has been promoting the adoption of distributed ledger technologies (DLT), including blockchain and digital assets, since 2018.
One of the cores messages it has been trying to get across is that storing digital assets is very different from storing traditional assets, and investors need to have faith that custodians are using storage solutions that are safe from loss, theft, hacking and damage.
The CMTA has also previously published anti-money laundering (AML) standards for digital assets and DLT. Though the CMTA’s standards have no formal legal or regulatory status, it is hoped that the industry will see the benefits in adopting them widely.
AYO.NEWS says:
As we’ve said many times, for digital assets to go truly mainstream and be embraced by large institutions, there needs to be complete faith in storage and management. Despite all the benefits provided by decentralisation and digital assets, there’s a scary amount of value still stored in relatively weak solutions – vulnerable to theft, accidental loss, and natural/man-made disasters.
However, there are some very interesting technologies being developed, that promise to answer all requirements in terms of convenience and accessibility, while massively increasing security and survivability. For example, earlier this week we reported that digital asset security specialist Ngrave has announced its flagship product, the fully offline hardware wallet Ngrave Zero, will go on sale next month – the first wallet to achieve EAL-7 certification. The company has also developed the world’s first recoverable backup, Graphene.
A couple of weeks ago Digivault, a subsidiary of Diginex, also launched a new permanently live warm custody solution called ‘Helios’, which offers digital asset storage at ‘military-grade secure locations.’
AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.
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